Loe raamatut: «Mrs. Cliff's Yacht», lehekülg 8

CHAPTER XV
MISS NANCY MAKES A CALL

It was a day or two after the most satisfactory arrangement between the Thorpedykes, Mrs. Cliff, and Mr. Burke had been concluded, and before it had been made public, that Miss Nancy Shott came to call upon Mrs. Cliff.

As she walked, stiff as a grenadier, and almost as tall, she passed by the new building without turning her head even to glance at it, and going directly up to the front door of the old house, she rang the bell.

As Mrs. Cliff's domestic household were all engaged in the new part of the building, the bell was not heard, and after waiting nearly a minute, Miss Shott rang it again with such vigor that the door was soon opened by a maid, who informed her that Mrs. Cliff was not at home, but that Miss Croup was in.

"Very well," said Miss Shott, "I'll see her!" and, passing the servant, she entered the old parlor. The maid followed her.

"There's no fire here," she said. "Won't you please walk into the other part of the house, which is heated? Miss Croup is over there."

"No!" said Miss Shott, seating herself upon the sofa. "This suits me very well, and Willy Croup can come to me here as well as anywhere else!"

Presently Willy arrived, wishing very much that she also had been out.

"Do come over to the other parlor, Miss Shott!" said she. "There's no furnace heat here because Mrs. Cliff didn't want the old house altered, and we use this room so little that we haven't made a fire."

"I thought you had the chimney put in order!" said Miss Shott, without moving from her seat. "Doesn't it work right?"

Willy assured her visitor that the chimney was in good condition so far as she knew, and repeated her invitation to come into a warmer room, but to this Miss Shott paid no attention.

"It's an old saying," said she, "that a bad chimney saves fuel! – I understand that you've all been to New York shopping?"

"Yes," said Willy, laughing. "It was a kind of shopping, but that's not exactly what I'd call it!" And perceiving that Miss Shott intended to remain where she was, she took a seat.

"Well, of course," said Miss Shott, "everybody's got to act according to their own judgments and consciences! If I was going to buy winter things, I'd do what I could to help the business of my own town, and if I did happen to want anything I couldn't get here, I'd surely go to Harrington, where the people might almost be called neighbors!"

Willy laughed outright. "Oh, Miss Shott," she said, "you couldn't buy the things we bought, in Harrington! I don't believe they could be found in Boston!"

"I was speaking about myself," said Miss Nancy. "I could find anything I wanted in Harrington, and if my wants went ahead of what they had there, I should say that my wants were going too far and ought to be curbed! And so you took those poor old Thorpedyke women with you. I expect they must be nearly fagged out. I don't see how the oldest one ever stood being dragged from store to store all over New York, as she must have been! She's a pretty old woman and can't be expected to stand even what another woman, younger than she is, but old enough, and excited by having money to spend, can stand! It's a wonder to me that you brought her back alive!"

"Miss Eleanor came back a great deal better than she was when she left!" exclaimed Willy, indignantly. "She'll tell you, if you ask her, that that visit to New York did her a great deal of good!"

"No, she won't!" said Miss Shott, "for she don't speak to me. It's been two years since I had anything to do with her!"

Willy knew all about the quarrel between the Thorpedyke ladies and Nancy, and wished to change the subject.

"Don't you want to go and look at the new part of the house?" she said. "Perhaps you'd like to see the things we've bought in New York, and it's cold here!"

To this invitation and the subsequent remark Miss Shott paid no attention. She did not intend to give Willy the pleasure of showing her over the house, and it was not at all necessary, for she had seen nearly everything in it.

During the absence of Mrs. Cliff she had made many visits to the house, and, as she was acquainted with the woman who had been left in charge, she had examined every room, from ground to roof, and had scrutinized and criticised the carpets as they had been laid and the furniture as it had been put in place.

She saw that Willy was beginning to shiver a little, and was well satisfied that she should feel cold. It would help take the conceit out of her. As for herself, she wore a warm cloak and did not mind a cold room.

"I'm told," she said, "that Mrs. Cliff's putting up a new stable. What was the matter with the old one?"

"It wasn't big enough," said Willy.

"It holds two horses, don't it, and what could anybody want more than that, I'd like to know!"

Willy was now getting a little out of temper.

"That's not enough for Mrs. Cliff," she said. "She's going to have a nice carriage and a pair of horses, and a regular coachman, not Andrew Marks!"

"Well!" said Miss Shott, and for a few moments she sat silent. Then she spoke. "I suppose Mrs. Cliff's goin' to take boarders."

"Boarders!" cried Willy. "What makes you say such a thing as that?"

"If she isn't," said Miss Shott, "I don't see what she'll do with all the rooms in that new part of the house."

"She's goin' to live in it," said Willy. "That's what she's goin' to do with it!"

"Boarders are very uncertain," remarked Miss Shott, "and just as likely to be a loss as a profit. Mr. Williams tried it at the hotel summer after summer, and if he couldn't make anything, I don't see how Mrs. Cliff can expect to."

"She doesn't expect to take boarders, and you know it!" said Willy.

Miss Shott folded her hands upon her lap.

"It's goin' to be a dreadful hard winter. I never did see so many acorns and chestnuts, and there's more cedar berries on the trees than I've ever known in all my life! I expect there'll be awful distress among the poor, and when I say 'poor' I don't mean people that's likely to suffer for food and a night's lodging, but respectable people who have to work hard and calculate day and night how to make both ends meet. These're the folks that're goin' to suffer in body and mind this winter; and if people that's got more money than they know what to do with, and don't care to save up for old age and a rainy day, would think sometimes of their deserving neighbors who have to pinch and suffer when they're going round buyin' rugs that must have cost at least as much as twenty dollars apiece and which they don't need at all, there bein' carpet already on the floor, it would be more to their credit and benefit to their fellow-beings. But, of course, one person's conscience isn't another person's, and we've each got to judge for ourselves, and be judged afterwards!"

Now Willy leaned forward in her chair, and her eyes glistened. As her body grew colder, so did her temper grow warmer.

"If it's Mrs. Cliff you're thinkin' about, Nancy Shott," said she, "I'll just tell you that you're as wrong as you can be! There isn't a more generous and a kinder person in this whole town than Mrs. Cliff is, and she isn't only that way to-day, but she's always been so, whether she's had little or whether she's had much!"

"What did she ever do, I'd like to know!" said Miss Nancy. "She's lined her own nest pretty well, but what's she ever done for anybody else – "

"Now, Nancy Shott," said Willy, "you know she's been doin' for other people all her life whenever she could! She's done for you more than once, as I happen to know, – and she's done for other neighbors and friends. And, more than that, she's gone abroad to do good, and that's more than anybody else in this town's done, as I know of!"

"She didn't go to South America to do good to anybody but herself," coolly remarked the visitor.

"I'm not thinking of that!" said Willy. "She went there on business, as everybody knows! But you remember well enough when she was in the city, and I was with her, when the dreadful cholera times came on! Everybody said that there wasn't a person who worked harder and did more for the poor people who were brought to the hospital than Sarah did.

"She worked for them night and day; before they were dead and after they were dead! I did what I could, but it wasn't nothin' to what she did! 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 Willy, "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 Thorpedykes 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 Thorpedyke 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 Thorpedykes 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 spacious grounds had been of so much assistance 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 spacious 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 cañon 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 Thorpedyke 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. Willy 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 Thorpedyke did not fancy such cold amusement, Mrs. Cliff and Willy went with him a few times, and once Willy 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 Willy 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 superincumbent 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 circumstances.

Burke felt a little embarrassed 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 associations 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.

"No," said Burke, "not in the summer. I hear Plainton is pretty hot in the summer, and she'll go – " (Oh, a radiant thought came to him!) "I expect she'll cruise about in her yacht during the warm weather."

"Her yacht!" exclaimed Mrs. Buskirk, for the first time exhibiting marks of actual interest. "Has Mrs. Cliff a yacht?"

"She's going to have one," said Burke to himself, "and I'll put her up to it before I go home this day."

"Yes," he said aloud, "that is, she hasn't got it yet, but she's going to have it as soon as the season opens. I shall select it for her. I know all about yachts and every other kind of craft, and she'll have one of the very finest on this coast. She's a good sailor, Mrs. Cliff is, for I've cruised with her! And nothing will she enjoy better in hot weather than her noble yacht and the open sea!"

Now this did make an impression upon Mrs. Buskirk. A citizen of Plainton who possessed a yacht was not to be disregarded. After this she was rather abstracted, and the conversation fell off. Burke saw that it was time for him to go, and as he had now said all he cared to say, he was willing to do so.

In parting with him Mrs. Buskirk was rather more gracious than when she received him. "I hope when you call again," she said, "that you may find my husband at home. I know he will be glad to see you!"

As Burke jingled and pranced away he grinned behind his great fur collar. "She'll call!" said he to himself. "She'll call on the yacht if she doesn't call on anything else!"