Both of us had been buyin" things, and makin" them up for ourselves, for cotton and linen goods was so cheap then. If it hadn"t been for the troubles which came on, we"d had enough to last us for years! But Sarah Cliff isn"t the kind of woman to keep things for herself when they"re wanted by others, and when she had given everything that she had to those poor creatures at the hospitals, she took my things without as much as takin" the trouble to ask me, for in times like that she isn"t the woman to hesitate when she thinks she"s doin" what ought to be done, and at one time, in that hospital, there was eleven corpses in my night-gowns!"
"Horrible!" exclaimed Miss Shott, rising to her feet. "It would have killed me to think of such a thing as that!"
"Well, if it would have killed you," said w.i.l.l.y, "there was another night-gown left."
"If you"re going to talk that way," said Miss Shott, "I might as well go. I supposed that when I came here I would at least have been treated civilly!"
CHAPTER XVI
MR. BURKE MAKES A CALL
Mrs. Cliff now began her life as a rich woman. The Thorped.y.k.es were established in the new building; her carriage and horses, with a coachman in plain livery, were seen upon the streets of Plainton; she gave dinners and teas, and subscribed in a modestly open way to appropriate charities; she extended suitable aid to the members of Mrs.
Ferguson"s family, both living and departed; and the fact that she was willing to help in church work was made very plain by a remark of Miss Shott, who, upon a certain Sunday morning at the conclusion of services, happened to stop in front of Mrs. Cliff, who was going out of the church.
"Oh," said Miss Shott, suddenly stepping very much to one side, "I wouldn"t have got in your way if I"d remembered that it was you who pays the new choir!"
Mr. Burke established himself in the Thorped.y.k.e house, which he immediately repaired from top to bottom; but although he frequently repeated to himself and to his acquaintances that he had now set up housekeeping in just the way that he had always wished for, with plenty of servants to do everything just as he wanted it done, he was not happy nevertheless. He felt the loss of the stirring occupation which had so delighted him, and his active mind continually looked right and left for something to do.
He spoke with Mrs. Cliff in regard to the propriety of proposing to the Thorped.y.k.es that he should build an addition to their house, declaring that such an addition would make the old mansion ever so much more valuable, and as to the cost, he would arrange that so that they would never feel the payment of it. But this suggestion met with no encouragement, and poor Burke was so hard put to it for something to occupy his mind that one day he asked Mrs. Cliff if she had entirely given up her idea of employing some of her fortune for the benefit of the native Peruvians, stating that if she wanted an agent to go down there and to attend to that sort of thing, he believed he would be glad to go himself.
But Mrs. Cliff did not intend to send anything to the native Peruvians.
According to the arrangements that Captain Horn had made for their benefit they would have as large a share of the Incas" gold as they could possibly claim, and, therefore, she did not feel herself called upon to do anything. "If we had kept it all," she said, "that would have been a different thing!"
In fact, Mrs. Cliff"s conscience was now in a very easy and satisfied condition. She did not feel that she owed anything to her fellow-beings that she was not giving them, or that she owed anything to herself that she was not giving to herself. The expenses of building and of the improvements to her s.p.a.cious grounds had been of so much a.s.sistance in removing the plethora of her income that she was greatly encouraged. She felt that she now had her fortune under control, and that she herself might be able to manage it for the future. Already she was making her plans for the next year.
Many schemes she had for the worthy disposition of her wealth, and the more she thought of them and planned their details, the less inclined she felt to leave for an hour or two her s.p.a.cious and sumptuous apartments in the new building and go back to her little former home where she might think of old times and relieve her mind from the weight of the novelty and the richness of her new dining-room and its adjuncts.
Often as she sat in her stately drawing-room she longed for her old friend Edna, and wished that she and the Captain might come and see how well she had used her share of the great fortune.
But Captain Horn and his wife were far away. Mrs. Cliff had frequent letters from Edna, which described their leisurely and delightful travels in the south and west. Their minds and bodies had been so strained and tired by hard thinking and hard work that all they wanted now was an enjoyment of life and the world as restful and as tranquil as they could make it. After a time they would choose some happy spot, and make for themselves a home. Three of the negroes, Maka and Cheditafa and Mok, were with them, and the others had been left on a farm where they might study methods of American agriculture until the time should come when the Captain should require their services on his estate.
Ralph was in Boston, where, in spite of his independent ideas in regard to his education, he was preparing himself to enter Harvard.
"I know what the Captain means when he speaks of settling down!" said Burke when he heard of this. "He"ll buy a canon and two or three counties and live out there like a lord! And if he does that, I"ll go out and see him. I want to see this Inca money sprouting and flourishing a good deal more than it has done yet!"
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Cliff. "Don"t you call this splendid house and everything in it a sign of sprouting and flourishing?"
"Oh, my dear madam," said Burke, rising from his seat and walking the floor, "if you could have looked through the hole in the top of the mound and have seen under you cartloads and cartloads of pure gold, and had let your mind rest on what might have grown out of it, a house like this would have seemed like an acorn on an oak tree!"
"And you think the Captain will have the oak tree?" she asked.
"Yes," said Burke; "I think he"s the sort of man to want it, and if he wants it he"ll have it!"
There were days when the weather was very bad and time hung unusually heavy upon Mr. Burke"s hands, when he thought it might be a good thing to get married. He had a house and money enough to keep a wife as well as any woman who would have him had any reason to expect. But there were two objections to this plan. In the first place, what would he do with his wife after he got tired of living in the Thorped.y.k.e house; and secondly, where could he find anybody he would like to marry?
He had female acquaintances in Plainton, but not one of them seemed to have the qualifications he would desire in a wife. w.i.l.l.y Croup was a good-natured and pleasant woman, and he always liked to talk to her, but she was too old for him. He might like to adopt her as a maiden aunt, but then that would not be practicable, for Mrs. Cliff would not be willing to give her up.
At this time Burke would have gone to make a visit to his mother, but there was also an objection to this. He would not have dared to present himself before her in his fur-trimmed overcoat and his high silk hat.
She was a true sailor"s mother, and she would have laughed him to scorn, and so habituated had he become to the dress of a fine gentleman that it would have seriously interfered with his personal satisfaction to put on the rough winter clothes in which his mother would expect to see him.
The same reason prevented him from going to his old friend Shirley. He knew very well that Shirley did not wear a high silk hat and carry a cane, and he had a sufficient knowledge of human nature and of himself to know that if his present personal appearance were made the subject of ridicule, or even inordinate surprise, it would not afford him the same stimulating gratification which he now derived from it.
Fortunately the weather grew colder, and there was snow and excellent sleighing, and now Burke sent for a fine double sleigh, and, with a fur cap, a great fur collar over his overcoat, fur gloves, and an enormous lap-robe of fur, he jingled and glided over the country in great delight, enjoying the sight of the fur-garbed coachman in front of him almost as much as the glittering snow and the crisp fresh air.
He invited the ladies of the Cliff mansion to accompany him in these sleigh-rides, but although the Misses Thorped.y.k.e did not fancy such cold amus.e.m.e.nt, Mrs. Cliff and w.i.l.l.y went with him a few times, and once w.i.l.l.y accompanied him alone.
This positively decided the opinion of Plainton in regard to his reason for living in that town. But there were those who said that he might yet discover that his plans would not succeed. Mrs. Cliff now seemed to be in remarkably good health, and as it was not likely that Mr. Burke would actually propose marriage to w.i.l.l.y until he saw some signs of failing in Mrs. Cliff, he might have to wait a long, long time; during which his intended victim would probably grow so wrinkled and old that even the most debased of fortune-hunters would refuse to have her. Then, of course, the fine gentleman would find out that he had lost all the time he had spent scheming here in Plainton.
The Buskirks were spending this winter in their country home, and one afternoon Mr. Burke thought he would drive up in his sleigh and make a call upon them. He had been there before, but had seen no one, and some weeks afterward Mr. Buskirk had dropped in at the hotel, but had not found him. This sort of visiting did not suit our friend Burke, and he determined to go and see what a Buskirk was really like.
Having jingled and pranced up to the front of the handsome mansion on the hill, and having been informed that the gentleman of the house was not at home, he asked for his lady, and, as she was in, he was ushered into a parlor. Here, having thrown aside some of his superinc.u.mbent furs, George Burke sat and looked about him. He had plenty of time for observation, for it was long before Mrs. Buskirk made her appearance.
With the exception of Mrs. Cliff"s house, with which he had had so much to do, Burke had never before been inside a dwelling belonging to a very rich person, and the Buskirk mansion interested him very much. Although he was so little familiar with fine furniture, pictures, and bric-a-brac, he was a man of quick perceptions and good judgment, and it did not take him long to discover that the internal furnishings of the Buskirk house were far inferior to those of the addition to Mrs. Cliff"s old home.
The room in which he sat was large and pretentious, but when it had been furnished there had been no lady of good family accustomed to the furnishings of wealth and culture, and with an artistic taste gained in travel at home and abroad, to superintend the selection of these pictures, this carpet, and the coverings of this furniture!
He laughed within himself as he sat, his fur cape on his knees and his silk hat in his hand, and he was so elated and pleased with the knowledge of the superiority of Mrs. Cliff"s home over this house of the proud city people who had so long looked down upon Plainton, that he entirely forgot his intention of recalling, as he sat in the fine parlor of the Buskirks, the olden times when he used to get up early in the morning and swab the deck.
"These people ought to come down and see Mrs. Cliff"s house," thought Burke, "and I"ll make them do it if I can!"
When Mrs. Buskirk, a lady who had always found it necessary to place strong guards around her social position, made her appearance, she received her visitor with an attentive civility. She had been impressed by his appearance when she had seen him grandly careering in his barouche or his sleigh, and she was still more impressed as she saw him in her parlor with additional furs. She had heard he had been a sailor, but now as she talked to him, the belief grew upon her that he might yet make a very good sailor. He was courteous, entirely at his ease, and perhaps a little too bland, and Mrs. Buskirk thought that although her husband might like to sit and smoke with this well-dressed, sun-burned man, he was not a person very desirable for the society of herself and daughters.
But she was willing to sit and talk to Mr. Burke, for she wanted to ask him some questions about Mrs. Cliff. She had heard about that lady"s new house, or rather the improvement to her old one, and she had driven past it, and she did not altogether understand the state of affairs.
She had known that Mrs. Cliff was a widow of a storekeeper of the town, and that she had come into possession of a portion of a treasure which had been discovered somewhere in the West Indies or South America, but those portions of treasures which might be allotted to the widow of a storekeeper in a little country town were not likely to be very much, and Mrs. Buskirk was anxious to know something definite about Mrs.
Cliff"s present circ.u.mstances.
Burke felt a little embarra.s.sed in regard to his answers. He knew that Mrs. Cliff was very anxious not to appear as a millionnaire in the midst of the friends and a.s.sociations of her native town,--at least, that she did not desire to do so until her real financial position had been gradually understood and accepted. Nothing she would dislike so much as to be regarded as the people in her social circle regarded the Buskirks on the hill.
So Burke did not blaze out as he would have liked to do with a true and faithful statement of Mrs. Cliff"s great wealth,--far in excess, he was very sure, of that of the fine lady with whom he was talking,--but he said everything he could in a modest way, or what seemed so to him, in regard to his friend"s house and belongings.
"But it seems to me," said Mrs. Buskirk, "that it"s a very strange thing for any one to build a house, such as the one you describe, in such a neighborhood, when there are so many desirable locations on the outskirts of the town. The houses on the opposite side of the street are very small, some of them even mean; if I am not mistaken there is a little shop somewhere along there! I should consider that that sort of thing would spoil any house, no matter how good it might be in itself!"
"Oh, that makes no difference whatever!" said Burke, with a wave of his hand, and delighted to remember a proposition he had made to Mrs. Cliff and which she had viewed with favor. "Mrs. Cliff will soon settle all that! She"s going to buy that whole block opposite to her and make a park of it. She"ll clear away all the houses and everything belonging to them, and she"ll plant trees, and lay out lawns and driveways, and have a regular landscape gardener who"ll superintend everything. And she"s going to have the water brought in pipes which will end in some great rocks, which we"ll have hauled from the woods, and from under these rocks a brook will flow and meander through the park. And there"ll be flowers, and reeds, and rushes, and, very likely, a fountain with the spare water.
"And that"ll be a public park for the use of the whole town, and you can see for yourself, madam, that it"ll be a grand thing to look out from Mrs. Cliff"s windows on such a beautiful place! It will be fitted up and railed off very much after the style of her own grounds, so that the whole thing will be like a great estate right in the middle of the town.
She"s thinkin" of callin" the park "The Grove of the Incas." That sounds nice; don"t you think so, madam?"
"It sounds very well indeed," said Mrs. Buskirk. She had heard before of plans made by people who had suddenly come into possession of money.
Burke saw that he had not yet made the impression that he desired. He wanted, without actually saying so, to let this somewhat supercilious lady know that if the possession of money was a reason for social position,--and he knew of no other reason for the Buskirks"
position,--Mrs. Cliff would be aft, talking to the Captain while the Buskirks would be walking about by themselves amidship.
But he did not know how to do this. He knew it would be no use to talk about horses and carriages, and all that sort of thing, for these the Buskirks possessed, and their coachman wore top boots,--a thing Mrs.
Cliff would never submit to. He was almost on the point of relinquishing his attempt to make Mrs. Buskirk call upon the widow of the storekeeper, when the lady helped him by asking in a casual way if Mrs. Cliff proposed living winter and summer in her new house.