The Rich Mrs Burgoyne | Page 6

in the world might be had for the asking.
All this part of the town lay northeast of the sleepy little Lobos River,
which cut Santa Paloma in two. It was a pretty river, a boiling yellow
torrent in winter, but low enough in the summer-time for the children to
wade across the shallows, and shaded all along its course by

overhanging maples, and willows, and oaktrees, and an undergrowth of
wild currant and hazel bushes and blackberry vines. Across the river
was Old Paloma, where dust from the cannery chimneys and soot from
the railway sheds powdered an ugly shabby settlement of shanties and
cheap lodging-houses. Old Paloma was peppered thick with saloons,
and flavored by them, and by the odor of frying grease, and by an ashy
waste known as the "dump." Over all other odors lay the sweet, cloying
smell of crushed grapes from the winery and the pungent odor from the
tannery of White & Company. The men, and boys, and girls of the
settlement all worked in one or another of these places, and the women
gossiped in their untidy doorways. Above the Carew house and Doctor
Brown's, opposite, River Street came perforce to an end, for it was
crossed 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 the
shabby, neglected garden and the tangle of pepper, and eucalyptus, and
weeping willow trees that half hid the old Holly mansion. Once this
had been 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 the sons and daughters had gone away into the world. The house,
furnished just as they had left it, was for sale, but the years went by,
and no buyer appeared; and meantime the garden flowers ran wild, the
lawns were dry and brown, and the fence was smothered in coarse rose
vines and rampant wild blackberry vines. Dry grass and yarrow and
hollow milkweed grew high in the gateways, and when the village
children went through them to prowl, as children love to prowl, about
the neglected house and orchard, they left long, dusty wakes in the
crushed weeds. Further up than the children usually ventured, there was
an old bridge across the Lobos, Captain Holly's private road to the mill
town; but it was boarded across now, and hundreds of chipmunks
nested in it, and whisked about it undisturbed. The great stables and
barns stood empty; the fountains were long gone dry. Only the orchard
continued to bear heavily.
The Holly estate ran up into the hill behind it, one of the wooded
foothills that encircled all Santa Paloma, as they encircle so many
California towns. Already turning brown, and crowned with dense, low

groves of oak, and bay, and madrona trees, they shut off the world
outside; although sometimes on a still day the solemn booming of the
ocean could be heard beyond them, and a hundred times a year the
Pacific fogs came creeping over them long before dawn, and Santa
Paloma awakened in an enveloping cloud of soft mist. Here and there
the slopes of these hills were checkered with the sharp oblongs and
angles of young vineyards, and hidden by the thickening green of peach
and apple orchards. A few low, brown dairy ranch-houses were perched
high on the ridges; the red-brown moving stream of the cattle
home-coming in mid-afternoon could be seen from the village on a
clear day. And over hill and valley, on this wonderful afternoon in late
spring, the most generous sunlight in the world lay warm and golden,
and across them the shadows of high clouds--for there had been rain in
the night--traveled slowly.
"I declare," said little Mrs. Carew lazily, "I could go to sleep!"
CHAPTER II
A moment later when a tall man came up the path and dropped on the
top porch step with an air of being entirely at home, Mrs. Carew was
still dreaming, half-awake and half-asleep.
"Hello, Jeanette!" said the newcomer. "What's new with thee, coz?"
"Don't smoke there, Barry, and get things mussy!" said Mrs. Carew in
return, smiling to soften the command, and to show Barry Valentine
that he was welcome.
Barry was usually welcome everywhere, although not at all approved in
many cases, and criticised even by the people who liked him best. He
was a sort of fourth cousin of Mrs. Carew, who sometimes felt herself
called to the difficult task of defending him because of the distant
kinship. He was very handsome, lean, and dark, with a sleepy smile and
with eyes that all children loved;