“No ought about it that I know of. You must call some time, and may as well have it done with. You’ll find the young ladies charming.”
“A-all right,” Reginald answered, and the words sounded like a groan.
CHAPTER V
THE 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 shall not 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.”
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 neck one 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 despised herself 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.