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Tracy Park by Mary Jane Holmes

M >> Mary Jane Holmes >> Tracy Park




'Dolly,' he gasped at last, when he could speak at all--'Dolly, what do
you think? Just listen. Arthur is going to Europe, to stay forever,
perhaps, and has left us Tracy Park. We are going there to live, and you
will be as grand a lady as Mrs. Atherton, of Brier Hill; or that young
girl at Collingwood.'

Dolly had a platter of ham and eggs in her hand, and she never could
tell, though she often tried to do so, what prevented her from dropping
the whole upon the floor. She did spill some of the fat upon her clean
tablecloth, she put the dish down so suddenly, and sinking into a chair,
demanded what her husband meant. Was he crazy, or what?

'Not a bit of it,' he replied, recovering himself and beginning to
realize the good fortune which had come to him. 'We are rich people,
Dolly. Read for yourself;' and he passed her the letter, which she
seemed to understand better than he had done.

'Why, yes,' she said. 'We are going to Tracy Park to live; but that
doesn't make us rich. It is not ours.'

'I know that,' her husband replied. 'But we shall enjoy it all the same,
and hold our heads with the best of them. Besides, don't you see, Arthur
gives me _carte blanche_ as to pay for my services, and, though I shall
do right, it is not in human nature that I should not feather my nest
when I have a chance. Some of that money ought to have been mine. I
shall sell out at once if I can find a purchaser, and if I cannot, I
shall rent the grocery and move out of this hole double quick.'

His ideas were growing faster than those of his wife, who was attached
to Langley and its people, and shrank a little from the grander opening
before her. She had once spent a few days at Tracy Park, as Arthur's
guest, and had felt great restraint even in the presence of Mrs.
Crawford and Amy, whom she recognized as ladies notwithstanding their
position in the house. On that occasion she had, with her
brother-in-law, been invited to dine at Brier Hill, the country-seat of
Mrs. Grace Atherton, a gay widow, whose dash and style had completely
overawed the plain, matter-of-fact Dolly, who did not know what half the
dishes were, or what she was expected to do. But, by watching Arthur,
and declining some things which she felt sure were beyond her
comprehension, she managed tolerably well, though when the dinner was
over, and she could breathe freely again, she found that the back of her
new silk gown was wet with perspiration, which had oozed from every pore
during the hour and a half she had sat at the table. And even then her
troubles were not ended, for coffee was served in the drawing-room, and
as Arthur took his clear, she did not know whether she was expected to
do the same or not, but finally ventured to say she would have hers with
'trimmin's.' There was a mischievous twinkle in Mrs. Atherton's eyes
which disconcerted her so much that she spilled her coffee in her lap,
and felt, as she afterward told a friend to whom she was describing the
dinner, as if she could have been knocked down with a feather.

'Such folderol!' she said. 'Changing your plates all the time--eating
peas in the winter greener than grass, with nothing under the sun with
them, and drinking coffee out of a cup about as big as a thimble. Give
me the good old-fashioned way, I say, with peas and potatoes, and meat,
and things, and cups that will hold half a pint and have some thickness
that you can feel in your mouth.'

And now she was to exchange the good, old-fashioned way for what she
termed 'folderol,' and for a time she did not like it. But her husband
was so delighted and eager that he succeeded in impressing her with some
of his enthusiasm, and after he had returned to his grocery, and her
dishes were washed, she removed her large kitchen apron, and pulling
down the sleeves of her dress, went and stood before the mirror, where
she examined herself critically and not without some degree of
complacency.

Her hair was black and glossy, or would be if she had time to care for
it as it ought to be cared for; her eyes were bright, and perhaps in
time she might learn to use them as Mrs. Atherton used hers.

Mrs. Atherton stood as the criterion for everything elegant and
fashionable, and naturally it was with her that she compared herself.

'She is older than I am,' she said to herself; 'there are crow-tracks
around her eyes, and her complexion is not a bit better than mine was
before I spoiled it with soap-suds, and stove heat, and everything
else.'

Then she looked at her hands, but they were red and rough, and the nails
were broken and not at all like the nails which an expert has polished
for an hour or more. Mrs. Atherton's diamond rings would be sadly out of
place on Dolly's fingers, but time and abstinence from work would do
much for them, she reflected, and after all it would be nice to live in
a grand house, ride in a handsome carriage, and keep a hired girl to do
the heavy work. So, on the whole, she began to feel quite reconciled to
her change of situation, and to wonder how she ought to conduct herself
in view of her future position. She had intended going to the circus
that night, but she gave that up, telling her husband that it was a
second-class amusement any way, and she did not believe that either Mrs.
Atherton or the young lady at Collingwood patronized such places. So
they staid at home and talked together of what they should do at Tracy
Park, and wondered if it was their duty to ask all their Langley friends
to visit them. Mrs. Frank, as the more democratic of the two, decided
that it was. She was not going to begin by being _stuck up_, she said,
and when at last she left Langley four weeks later, every man, woman,
and child of her familiar acquaintance in town had been heartily invited
to call upon her at Tracy Park if ever they came that way.

Frank had disposed of his business at a reasonable price, and had rented
his house with all the furniture, except such articles as his wife
insisted upon taking with her. The bureau, and bedstead, and chairs
which she and Frank had bought together in Springfield just before their
marriage, the Boston rocker her mother had given her, and in which the
old mother had sat until the day she died, the cradle in which she had
rocked her first baby boy who was lying in the Langley grave-yard, were
dear to the wife and mother, and though her husband told her she could
have no use for them at Tracy Park, where the furniture was of the
costliest kind, and that she would probably put them in the servants'
rooms or attic, there was enough of sentiment in her nature to make her
cling to them as something of the past, and so they were boxed up and
forwarded by freight to Tracy Park, whither Mr. and Mrs. Tracy followed
them a week later.

The best dressmaker in Langley had been employed upon the wardrobe of
Mrs. Frank, who, in her travelling dress of some stuff goods of a
plaided pattern, too large and too bright to be quite in good taste,
felt herself perfectly _au fait_ as the mistress of Tracy Park, until
she reached Springfield, where Mrs. Grace Atherton, accompanied by a
tall, elegant looking young lady, entered the car and took a seat in
front of her. Neither of the ladies noticed her, but she recognized Mrs.
Atherton at once and guessed that her companion was the young lady from
Collingwood, who, rumor said, was soon to marry her guardian, Mr.
Richard Harrington, although he was old enough to be her father.

Dolly scanned both the ladies very closely, noting every article of
their costumes from their plain linen collars and cuffs to their quiet
dresses of gray, which seemed so much more in keeping with the dusty
cars than her buff and purple plaid.

'I ain't like them, and never shall be,' she said to herself, with a
bitter sense of her inferiority pressing upon her. 'I ain't like them,
and never shall be, if I live to be a hundred. I wish we were not going
to be grand. I shall never get used to it,' and the hot tears sprang to
her eyes as she longed to be back in the kitchen where she had worked so
hard.

But Dolly did not know then how readily people can forget the life of
toil behind them and adapt themselves to one of luxury and ease; and
with her the adaptability commenced in some degree the moment
Shannondale station was reached, and she saw the handsome carriage
waiting for them. A carriage finer far and more modern than the one from
Collingwood, in which Mrs. Atherton and the young lady took their seats,
laughing and chatting so gayly that they did not see the woman in the
big plaid who stood watching them with a rising feeling of jealousy and
resentment as she thought of Mrs. Atherton, 'She does not even notice
me.'

But when the Tracy carriage drew up, Grace Atherton saw and recognized
her, and whispered, in an aside to her companion:

'For goodness' sake, Edith, look! There are the Tracys, our new
neighbors.' Then she bowed to Mrs. Tracy, and said: 'Ah, I did not know
you were on the train.'

'I sat right behind you,' was Mrs. Tracy's rather ungracious reply: and
then, not knowing whether she ought to do it or not, she introduced her
husband.

'Yes, Mr. Tracy--how do you do?' was Mrs. Atherton's response; but she
did not in return introduce the young girl, whose dark eyes were
scanning the strangers so curiously, and this Dolly took as a slight and
inwardly resented it.

But Mrs. Atherton had spoken to her and that was something, and helped
to keep her spirits up as she was driven along the turnpike to the
entrance of the park.

On the occasion of Mrs. Frank's first and only visit to her
brother-in-law it was winter, and everything was covered with snow. But
it was summer now, the month of roses, and fragrance, and beauty, and as
the carriage passed up the broad, smooth avenue which led to the house,
Dolly's eyes wandered over the well-kept lawn, sweet with the scent of
newly-mown grass, the parteries of flowers and shrubs, the winding walks
and clumps of evergreens here and there formed into fancy rooms, with
rustic seats and tables under the over-hanging boughs; and when she
reflected that all this was hers to enjoy for many years, and perhaps
for her life-time, she felt the first stirring of that pride, and
satisfaction, and self-assertion which was to grow upon her so rapidly
and transform her from the plain, unpretentious woman who had washed,
and ironed, and baked, and mended in the small house in Langley into the
arrogant, haughty lady of fashion, who courted only the rich and looked
down upon her less fortunate neighbors. Now, however, she was very meek
and humble, and trembled as she alighted from the carriage before the
great stone house which was to be her home.

'Isn't this grand, Dolly?' her husband said, rubbing his hands together
and looking about him complacently.

'Yes, very grand,' Dolly answered him; but somehow it makes me feel
weaker than water. I suppose, though, I shall get accustomed to it.'




CHAPTER IV.

GETTING ACCUSTOMED TO IT.


In the absence of Mrs. Crawford, who for a week or more had been
domesticated in the cottage in the lane, as the house was designated
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 offence,
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, the cook, 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, who had said 'she could
just as soon have her salad with her other things, and save washing go
many dishes.'

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, doing her own
work, 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
twenty 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.

Nobody had called except the clergyman, not even Mrs. Crawford, whose
friendship and possible advice Mrs. Tracy had counted upon, and with
whom she knew she should feel more at ease than with Mrs. Atherton from
Brier Hill, or Miss Hastings from Collingwood. She had seen both the
last named ladies at church and had a nod from Mrs. Atherton, and that
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 dawn,
for she was minus hoops, which in those days were worn quite large; her
sleeves were rolled above her elbows, and, as a protection against the
juice of the berries, she wore a huge 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 or agent, 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 agents of all kinds,
and feeling certain that this was one--ringing the bell a second time,
as if in a hurry--she started for' the door in no very amiable frame of
mind, for peddlers were her abomination. Something ailed the lock or
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 cannot open this,'

Then, as she caught a whiff of burnt syrup, 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 or agent 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 staring 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, she replied,
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, and where the chairs and sofas were surrounded in
white linen, looking 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 finger-tips, 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 of
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, 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.

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