Mrs. Cliff's Yacht
by Frank R. Stockton · English · Gutenberg #30848 · 493,151 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Mrs. Cliff's Yacht
Author: Frank R. Stockton
Illustrator: A. Forestier
Release date: January 4, 2010 [eBook #30848]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30848
Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. CLIFF'S YACHT ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
MRS. CLIFF'S YACHT
[Illustration: BURKE DETERMINED TO GET NEAR ENOUGH TO HAIL THE DUNKERY
BEACON]
MRS. CLIFF'S YACHT
BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
_ILLUSTRATED BY A. FORESTIER_
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NORWOOD PRESS
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ALONE WITH HER WEALTH 1
II. WILLY CROUP DOESN'T KNOW 7
III. MISS NANCY SHOTT 16
IV. A LAUNCH INTO A NEW LIFE 25
V. A FUR-TRIMMED OVERCOAT AND A SILK HAT 36
VI. A TEMPERANCE LARK 45
VII. MR. BURKE ACCEPTS A RESPONSIBILITY 59
VIII. MR. BURKE BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS MOVE IN PLAINTON 68
IX. A MEETING OF HEIRS 80
X. THE INTELLECT OF MISS INCHMAN 92
XI. THE ARRIVAL OF THE NEW DINING-ROOM 99
XII. THE THORPEDYKE SISTERS 109
XIII. MONEY HUNGER 114
XIV. WILLY CROUP AS A PHILANTHROPIC DIPLOMATIST 121
XV. MISS NANCY MAKES A CALL 128
XVI. MR. BURKE MAKES A CALL 135
XVII. MRS. CLIFF'S YACHT 147
XVIII. THE DAWN OF THE GROVE OF THE INCAS 156
XIX. THE "SUMMER SHELTER" 162
XX. THE SYNOD 169
XXI. A TELEGRAM FROM CAPTAIN HORN 173
XXII. THE "SUMMER SHELTER" GOES TO SEA 182
XXIII. WILLY CROUP COMES TO THE FRONT 192
XXIV. CHANGES ON THE "SUMMER SHELTER" 203
XXV. A NOTE FOR CAPTAIN BURKE 218
XXVI. "WE'LL STICK TO SHIRLEY!" 228
XXVII. ON BOARD THE "DUNKERY BEACON" 235
XXVIII. THE PEOPLE ON THE "MONTEREY" 247
XXIX. THE "VITTORIO" FROM GENOA 254
XXX. THE BATTLE OF THE MERCHANT SHIPS 264
XXXI. "SHE BACKED!" 273
XXXII. A HEAD ON THE WATER 279
XXXIII. 11° 30' 19" N. LAT. by 56° 10' 19" W. LONG. 286
XXXIV. PLAINTON, MAINE 298
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
BURKE DETERMINED TO GET NEAR ENOUGH TO HAIL THE
"DUNKERY BEACON" _Frontispiece_
THE GENTLEMAN RAISED HIS HAT AND ASKED IF MRS. CLIFF
LIVED THERE 42
MRS. CLIFF'S INVITATION WAS DISCUSSED WITH LIVELY
APPRECIATION 170
THERE, FASTENED AGAINST THE FORE-MAST, WAS A LARGE
PIECE OF PAPER 194
WHEN SHIRLEY WENT ON DECK HE WAS MUCH PLEASED TO
SEE THE "SUMMER SHELTER" 238
BANKER COULD NOT HOLD BACK 270
HE SEIZED IT AND RAISED IT TO HIS SHOULDER 290
WILLY SAT AND LOOKED AT HIM 312
MRS. CLIFF'S YACHT
CHAPTER I
ALONE WITH HER WEALTH
On a beautiful September afternoon in a handsome room of one of the
grand, up-town hotels in New York sat Mrs. Cliff, widow and millionaire.
Widow of a village merchant, mistress of an unpretending house in the
little town of Plainton, Maine, and, by strange vicissitudes of fortune,
the possessor of great wealth, she was on her way from Paris to the
scene of that quiet domestic life to which for nearly thirty years she
had been accustomed.
She was alone in the hotel; her friends, Captain Horn and his wife Edna,
who had crossed the ocean with her, had stayed but a few days in New
York and had left early that afternoon for Niagara, and she was here by
herself in the hotel, waiting until the hour should arrive when she
would start on a night train for her home.
Her position was a peculiar one, altogether new to her. She was
absolutely independent,--not only could she do what she pleased, but
there was no one to tell her what it would be well for her to do, wise
for her to do, or unwise. Everything she could possibly want was within
her reach, and there was no reason why she should not have everything
she wanted.
For many months she had been possessed of enormous wealth, but never
until this moment had she felt herself the absolute, untrammelled
possessor of it. Until now Captain Horn, to whom she owed her gold, and
the power it gave her, had been with her or had exercised an influence
over her. Until the time had come when he could avow the possession of
his vast treasures, it had been impossible for her to make known her
share in them, and even after everything had been settled, and they had
all come home together in the finest state-rooms of a great ocean liner,
she had still felt dependent upon the counsels and judgment of her
friends.
But now she was left absolutely free and independent, untrammelled,
uncounselled, alone with her wealth.
She rose and looked out of the window, and, as she gazed upon the crowd
which swept up and down the beautiful avenue, she could not but smile as
she thought that she, a plain New England countrywoman, with her gray
hair brushed back from her brows, with hands a little hardened and
roughened with many a year of household duties, which had been to her as
much a pleasure as a labor, was in all probability richer than most of
the people who sat in the fine carriages or strolled in their
fashionable clothes along the sidewalk.
"If I wanted to do it," she thought, "I could have one of those
carriages with prancing horses and a driver in knee breeches, or I
could buy that house opposite, with its great front steps, its
balconies, and everything in it, but there is nobody on this earth who
could tempt me to live there."
"Now," said Mrs. Cliff to herself, as she turned from the window and
selected a fresh easy chair, and sank down into its luxurious depths,
"there is nothing in this world so delightful as to go back rich to
Plainton. To be rich in Paris or New York is nothing to me; it would
simply mean that I should be a common person there as I used to be at
home, and, for the matter of that, a little more common."
As the good lady's thoughts wandered northward, and spread themselves
from the railroad station at Plainton all over the little town, she was
filled with a great content and happiness to go to her old home with her
new money. This was a joy beyond anything she had dreamed of as possible
in this world.
But it was the conjunction of the two which produced this delightful
effect upon her mind. The money anywhere else, or Plainton without it,
would not have made Mrs. Cliff the happy woman that she was.
It pleased her to let her mind wander over the incidents of her recent
visit to her old home, the most unhappy visit she had ever made in all
her life, but everything that was unpleasant then would help to make
everything more delightful in the present home-coming.
She thought of the mental chains and fetters she had worn when she went
to Plainton with plenty of money in her purse and a beautiful pair of
California blankets in her handsome trunk; when she had been afraid to
speak of the one or to show the other; when she had sat quietly and
received charity from people whose houses and land, furniture, horses,
and cows, she could have bought and given away without feeling their
loss; when she had been publicly berated by Nancy Shott for spending
money on luxuries which should have been used to pay her debts; when she
had been afraid to put her money in the bank for fear it would act as a
dynamite bomb and blow up the fortunes of her friends, and when she
could find no refuge from the miseries brought upon her by the necessity
of concealing her wealth except to go to bed and cover up her head so
that she should not hear the knock of some inquiring neighbor upon her
front door.
Then when she had made this background as dark and gloomy as it was
possible to make it, she placed before it the glittering picture of her
new existence in Plainton.
But this new life, bright as it now appeared to her, was not to be begun
without careful thought and earnest consideration. Ever since her
portion of the golden treasure had been definitely assigned to her, the
mind of Mrs. Cliff had been much occupied with plans for her future in
her old home.
It was not to be altogether a new life. All the friends she had in the
world, excepting Captain and Mrs. Horn, lived in Plainton. She did not
wish to lose these friends,--she did not wish to be obliged to make new
ones. With simple-minded and honest Willy Croup, who had long lived
with her and for her; with Mrs. Perley, the minister's wife; with all
her old neighbors and friends, she wished to live as she had always
lived, but, of course, with a difference. How to manage, arrange, and
regulate that difference was the great problem in her mind.
One thing she had determined upon: her money should not come between her
and those who loved her and who were loved by her. No matter what she
might do or what she might not do, she would not look down upon people
simply because she was rich, and oh, the blessed thought which followed
that! There would be nobody who could look down upon her because she was
not rich!
She did not intend to be a fine new woman; she did not intend to build a
fine new house. She was going to be the same Mrs. Cliff that she used to
be,--she was going to live in the same house. To be sure, she would add
to it. She would have a new dining-room and a guest's chamber over it,
and she would do a great many other things which were needed, but she
would live in her old home where she and her husband had been so happy,
and where she hoped he would look down from heaven and see her happy
until the end of her days.
As she thought of the things she intended to do, and of the manner in
which she intended to do them, Mrs. Cliff rose and walked the floor. She
felt as if she were a bird, a common-sized bird, perhaps, but with
enormous wings which seemed to grow and grow the more she thought of
them until they were able to carry her so far and so high that her mind
lost its power of directing them.
She determined to cease to think of the future, of what was going to be,
and to let her mind rest and quiet itself with what really existed. Here
she was in a great city full of wonders and delights, of comforts,
conveniences, luxuries, necessities, and all within her power. Almost
anything she could think of she might have; almost anything she wanted
to do she might do. A feeling of potentiality seemed to swell and throb
within her veins. She was possessed of an overpowering desire to do
something now, this moment, to try the power of her wealth.
Near her on the richly papered wall was a little button. She could touch
this and order--what should she order? A carriage and prancing pair to
take her to drive? She did not wish to drive. A cab to take her to the
shops, or an order to merchants to send her samples of their wares that
here, in her own room, like a queen or a princess, she might choose what
she wanted and think nothing of the cost? But no, she did not wish to
buy anything. She had purchased in Paris everything that she cared to
carry to Plainton.
She went and stood by the electric button. She must touch it, and must
have something! Her gold must give her an instant proof that it could
minister to her desires, but what should she ask for? Her mind travelled
over the whole field of the desirable, and yet not one salient object
presented itself. There was absolutely nothing that she could think of
that she wished to ask for at that moment. She was like a poor girl in
a fairy tale to whom the good fairy comes and asks her to make one wish
and it shall be granted, and who stands hesitating and trembling, not
being able to decide what is the one great thing for which she should
ask.
So stood Mrs. Cliff. There was a fairy, a powerful fairy, in her service
who could give her anything she desired, and with all her heart she
wanted to want something that minute. What should she want?
In her agitation she touched the bell. Half frightened at what she had
done, she stepped back and sat down. In a few minutes there was a knock,
the door opened, a servant entered. "Bring me a cup of tea," said Mrs.
Cliff.
CHAPTER II
WILLY CROUP DOESN'T KNOW
The next afternoon as the train approached Plainton, Mrs. Cliff found
herself a great deal agitated as she thought of the platform at the
station. Who would be there,--how should she be met? With all her heart
she hoped that there would not be anything like a formal reception, and
yet this was not improbable. Everybody knew she was coming; everybody
knew by what train she would arrive. She had written to Willy Croup, and
she was very sure that everybody knew everything that she had written.
More than this, everybody knew that she was coming home rich. How rich
they were not aware, because she had not gone into particulars on this
subject, but they knew that the wealthy Mrs. Cliff would arrive at 5.20
that afternoon, and what were they going to do about it?
When she had gone home before, all her friends and neighbors, and even
distant acquaintances,--if such people were possible in such a little
town,--had come to her house to bid her welcome, and many of them had
met her at the station. But then they had come to meet a poor,
shipwrecked widow, pitied by most of them and loved by many. Even those
who neither pitied nor loved her had a curiosity to see her, for she had
been shipwrecked, and it was not known in Plainton how people looked
after they had been wrecked.
But now the case was so different that Mrs. Cliff did not expect the
same sort of greeting, and she greatly feared formality. If Mr. Perley
should appear on the platform, surrounded by some of the leading members
of his congregation, and should publicly take her by the hand and bid
her "Welcome home!" and if those who felt themselves entitled to do so,
should come forward and shake hands with her, while others, who might
feel that they belonged to a different station in life, should keep in
the background and wait until she came to speak to them, she would be
deeply hurt.
After all, Plainton and the people in it were dearer to her than
anything else in the world, and it would be a great shock if she should
meet formality where she looked for cordial love. She wanted to see Mr.
Perley,--he was the first person she had seen when she came home
before,--but now she hoped that he would not be there. She was very much
afraid that he would make a stiff speech to her; and if he did that, she
would know that there had been a great change, and that the friends she
would meet were not the same friends she had left. She was almost afraid
to look out of the window as the train slowed up at the station.
The minds of the people of Plainton had been greatly exercised about
this home-coming of Mrs. Cliff. That afternoon it was probable that no
other subject of importance was thought about or talked about in the
town, and for some days before the whole matter had been so thoroughly
considered and discussed that the good citizens, without really coming
to any fixed and general decision upon the subject, had individually
made up their minds that, no matter what might happen afterward, they
would make no mistake upon this very important occasion which might
subsequently have an influence upon their intercourse with their old,
respected neighbor, now millionnaire. Each one for himself, or herself,
decided--some of them singly and some of them in groups--that as they
did not know what sort of a woman Mrs. Cliff had become since the change
in her circumstances, they would not place themselves in false
positions. Other people might go and meet her at the station, but they
would stay at home and see what happened. Even Mr. Perley thought it
wise, under the circumstances, to do this.
Therefore it was, that when Mrs. Cliff stepped down upon the platform,
she saw no one there but Willy Croup. If Mrs. Cliff was a little shocked
and a good deal surprised to find no one to meet her but that
simple-minded dependant and relative, her emotions were excited in a
greater degree by the manner in which she was greeted by this old friend
and companion.
Instead of rushing toward her with open arms,--for Willy was an
impulsive person and given to such emotional demonstrations,--Miss Croup
came forward, extending a loosely filled black cotton glove. Her large,
light-blue eyes showed a wondering interest, and Mrs. Cliff felt that
every portion of her visible attire was being carefully scanned.
For a moment Mrs. Cliff hesitated, and then she took the hand of Willy
Croup and shook it, but she did not speak. She had no command of words,
at least for greeting.
Willy earnestly inquired after her health, and said how glad she was to
see her, but Mrs. Cliff did not listen. She looked about her. For an
instant she thought that possibly the train had come in ahead of time,
but this, of course, was absurd--trains never did that.
"Willy," she said, her voice a little shaken, "has anything happened? Is
anybody sick?"
"Oh no!" said Willy; "everybody is well, so far as I know. I guess you
are wondering why there is nobody here to meet you, and I have been
wondering at that too. They must have thought that you did not want to
be bothered when you were attending to your baggage and things. Is
anybody with you?"
"With me!" exclaimed Mrs. Cliff; "who could be with me?"
"Oh, I didn't know," replied the other; "I thought perhaps you might
have a maidservant, or some of those black people you wrote about."
Mrs. Cliff was on the point of telling Willy she was a fool, but she
refrained.
"Here is the baggage-man," said Willy, "and he wants your checks."
As Mrs. Cliff took the little pieces of brass from her purse and handed
them to the man, Willy looked on in amazement.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "Seven! I guess you had to pay for extra
baggage. Shall I get you a carriage, and where do you want to be driven
to--to your own house or the hotel?"
Now Mrs. Cliff could not restrain herself. "What is the matter with you,
Willy? Have you gone crazy?" she exclaimed. "Of course I am going to my
own house, and I do not want any carriage. Did I ever need a carriage to
take me such a short distance as that? Tell the man to bring some one
with him to carry the trunks upstairs, and then come on."
"Let me carry your bag," said Willy, as the two walked away from the
station at a much greater pace, it may be remarked, than Willy was
accustomed to walk.
"No, you shall not carry my bag," said Mrs. Cliff, and not another word
did she speak until she had entered the hallway of her home. Then,
closing the door behind her, and without looking around at any of the
dear objects for a sight of which she had so long been yearning, she
turned to her companion.
"Willy," she cried, "what does this mean? Why do you treat me in this
way when I come home after having been away so long, and having suffered
so much? Why do you greet me as if you took me for a tax collector? Why
do you stand there like a--a horrible clam?"
Willy hesitated. She looked up and she looked down.
"Things are so altered," she said, "and I didn't know--"
"Well, know now," said Mrs. Cliff, as she held out her arms. In a moment
the two women were clasped in a tight embrace, kissing and sobbing.
"How should I know?" said poor Willy, as she was wiping her eyes.
"Chills went down me as I stood on that platform, wondering what sort of
a grand lady you would look like when you got out of the car, with two
servant women, most likely, and perhaps a butler, and trying to think
what I should say."
Mrs. Cliff laughed. "You were born addle-pated, and you can't help it.
Now, let us go through this house without wasting a minute!" Willy gazed
at her in amazement.
"You're just the same as you always was!" she cried "Indeed I am!" said
Mrs. Cliff. "Did you clean this dining-room yourself, Willy? It looks as
spick and span as if I had just left it."
"Indeed it does," was the proud reply, "and you couldn't find a speck of
dust from the ceiling to the floor!"
When Mrs. Cliff had been upstairs and downstairs, and in the front yard,
the side yard, and the back yard, and when her happy eyes had rested
upon all her dear possessions, she went into the kitchen.
"Now, Willy," she said, "let us go to work and get supper, for I must
say I am hungry."
At this Willy Croup turned pale, her chin dropped, a horrible suspicion
took possession of her. Could it be possible that it was all a mistake,
or that something dreadful had happened; that the riches which everybody
had been talking about had never existed, or had disappeared? She might
want to go to her old home; she might want to see her goods and
chattels, but that she should want to help get supper--that was
incomprehensible! At that moment the world looked very black to Willy.
If Mrs. Cliff had gone into the parlor, and had sat down in the best
rocking-chair to rest herself, and had said to her, "Please get supper
as soon as you can," Willy would have believed in everything, but now--!
The grinding of heavy wheels was heard in front of the house, and Willy
turned quickly and looked out of the window. There was a wagon
containing seven enormous trunks! Since the days when Plainton was a
little hamlet, up to the present time, when it contained a hotel, a
bank, a lyceum, and a weekly paper, no one had ever arrived within its
limits with seven such trunks. Instantly the blackness disappeared from
before the mind of Willy Croup.
"Now, you tell the men where to carry them," she cried, "and I will get
the supper in no time! Betty Handshall stayed here until this morning,
but she went away after dinner, for she was afraid if she stayed she
would be in the way, not knowing how much help you would bring with
you."
"I wonder if they are all crack-brained," thought Mrs. Cliff, as she
went to the front door to attend to her baggage.
That evening nearly all Plainton came to see Mrs. Cliff. No matter how
she returned,--as a purse-proud bondholder, as a lady of elegant wealth
with her attendants, as an old friend suddenly grown jolly and
prosperous,--it would be all right for her neighbors to go in and see
her in the evening. There they might suit themselves to her new
deportment whatever it might be, and there would be no danger of any of
them getting into false positions, which would have been very likely
indeed if they had gone to meet her at the station.
Her return to her own house gave her real friends a great deal of
satisfaction, for some of them had feared she would not go there. It
would have been difficult for them to know how to greet Mrs. Cliff at a
hotel, even such an unpretentious one as that of Plainton. All these
friends found her the same warm-hearted, cordial woman that she had
ever been. In fact, if there was any change at all in her, she was more
cordial than they had yet known her. As in the case of Willy Croup, a
cloud had risen before her. She had been beset by the sudden fear that
her money already threatened to come between her and her old friends.
"Not if I can help it!" said Mrs. Cliff to herself, as fervently as if
she had been vowing a vow to seek the Holy Grail; and she did help it.
The good people forgot what they had expected to think about her, and
only remembered what they had always thought of her. No matter what had
happened, she was the same.
But what had happened, and how it had happened, and all about it, up and
down, to the right and the left, above and below, everybody wanted to
know, and Mrs. Cliff, with sparkling eyes, was only too glad to tell
them. She had been obliged to be so reserved when she had come home
before, that she was all the more eager to be communicative now; and it
was past midnight before the first of that eager and delighted company
thought of going home.
There was one question, however, which Mrs. Cliff successfully evaded,
and that was--the amount of her wealth. She would not give even an
approximate idea of the value of her share of the golden treasure. It
was very soon plain to everybody that Mrs. Cliff was the same woman she
used to be in regard to keeping to herself that which she did not wish
to tell to others, and so everybody went away with imagination
absolutely unfettered.
CHAPTER III
MISS NANCY SHOTT
The next morning Mrs. Cliff sat alone in her parlor with her mind
earnestly fixed upon her own circumstances. Out in the kitchen, Willy
Croup was dashing about like a domestic fanatic, eager to get the
morning's work done and everything put in order, that she might go
upstairs with Mrs. Cliff, and witness the opening of those wonderful
trunks.
She was a happy woman, for she had a new dish-pan, which Mrs. Cliff had
authorized her to buy that very morning, the holes in the bottom of the
old one having been mended so often that she and Mrs. Cliff both
believed that it would be very well to get a new one and rid themselves
of further trouble.
Willy also had had the proud satisfaction of stopping at the carpenter
shop on her way to buy the dish-pan, and order him to come and do
whatever was necessary to the back-kitchen door. Sometimes it had been
the hinges and sometimes it had been the lock which had been out of
order on that door for at least a year, and although they had been
tinkering here and tinkering there, the door had never worked properly;
and now Mrs. Cliff had said that it must be put in perfect order even if
a new door and a new frame were required, and without any regard to what
it might cost. This to Willy was the dawn of a new era, and the thought
of it excited her like wine.
Mrs. Cliff's mind was not excited; it was disquieted. She had been
thinking of her investments and of her deposits, all of which had been
made under wise advice, and it had suddenly occurred to her to calculate
how much richer she was to-day than she had been yesterday. When she
appreciated the fact that the interest on her invested property had
increased her wealth, since the previous morning, by some hundreds of
dollars, it frightened her. She felt as if an irresistible flood of
opulence was flowing in upon her, and she shuddered to think of the
responsibility of directing it into its proper courses, and so
preventing it from overwhelming her and sweeping her away.
To-morrow there would be several hundred dollars more, and the next day
more, and so on always, and what was she doing, or what had she planned
to do, to give proper direction to these tidal waves of wealth? She had
bought a new dish-pan and ordered a door repaired!
To be sure, it was very soon to begin to think of the expenditure of her
income, but it was a question which could not be postponed. The
importance of it was increasing all the time. Every five minutes she was
two dollars richer.
For a moment she wished herself back in Paris or New York. There she
might open some flood-gate which would give instant relief from the
pressure of her affluence and allow her time to think; but what could
she do in Plainton? At least, how should she begin to do anything?
She got up and walked about the room. She was becoming annoyed, and even
a little angry. She resented this intrusion of her wealth upon her. She
wanted to rest quietly for a time, to enjoy her home and friends, and
not be obliged to think of anything which it was incumbent upon her to
do. From the bottom of her heart she wished that her possessions had all
been solid gold, or in some form in which they could not increase,
expand, or change in any way until she gave them leave. Then she would
live for a week or two, as she used to live, without thought of
increment or responsibilities, until she was ready to begin the life of
a rich woman and to set in motion the currents of her exuberant income.
But she could not change the state of affairs. The system of interest
had been set in motion, and her income was flowing in upon her hour by
hour, day by day, steadily and irresistibly, and her mind could not be
at rest until she had done something--at least, planned something--which
would not only prevent her from being overwhelmed and utterly
discouraged, but which would enable her to float proudly, on this grand
current of absolute power, over the material interests of the world.
Mrs. Cliff was a woman of good sense. No matter how much money she might
possess, she would have considered herself its unworthy possessor if she
should spend any of it without proper value received. She might spend it
foolishly, but she wanted the worth of her money. She would consider it
a silly thing, for instance, to pay a thousand dollars for an India
shawl, because few people wore India shawls, and she did not care for
them; but if she had done so, she would have been greatly mortified if
she found that she had paid too much, and that she might have bought as
good a shawl for seven hundred and fifty dollars.
Since she had been in that room and thinking about these things, enough
interest had come to her to enable her to buy a good silver watch for
some deserving person. Now, who was there to whom she could give a plain
silver watch? Willy Croup would be glad to have it, but then it would be
better to wait a few hours and give her a gold one.
Now it was that Willy came into the room with a disappointed expression
upon her countenance.
"I was just coming in to tell you," she said, "that I was ready now to
go up and help you open the trunks, but here comes that horrid Miss
Shott, and dear knows how long she will stay!"
Nancy Shott was the leading spinster of Plainton. In companies where
there were married ladies she was sometimes obliged to take a second
place, but never among maidens, old or young. There were very few
subjects upon which Miss Shott had not an opinion; and whatever this
opinion might be, she considered it her first duty in life to express
it. As a rule, the expression was more agreeable to her than to others.
When Mrs. Cliff heard that Miss Shott was approaching, she instantly
forgot her wealth and all her perplexities concerning it. Miss Shott
had not called upon her the previous evening, but she had not expected
her, nor did she expect her now.
On her previous visit to Plainton, Mrs. Cliff had been shamefully
insulted by Miss Shott, who had accused her of extravagance, and, by
implication, of dishonesty, and in return, the indignant widow had
opened upon her such a volley of justifiable retaliation that Miss
Shott, in great wrath, had retired from the house, followed,
figuratively, by a small coin which she had brought as a present and
which had been hurled after her.
But Mrs. Cliff knew that her acrimonious neighbor could never be
depended upon to do anything which might be expected of her, and she was
not quite so much surprised as she was annoyed. Of course, she had known
she must meet Nancy Shott, and she had intended to do nothing which
would recall to the mind of any one that she remembered the disagreeable
incident referred to, but she had not expected that the meeting would be
in private.
She knew that Nancy would do something decidedly unpleasant. If she had
stayed away because she wanted a chance to re-open the previous quarrel,
that would be bad enough; but if she had determined to drop all
resentment and had come prepared to offer honey and sugar, and thus try
to make a rich friend out of one she had considered as a poor enemy,
that would be still more disagreeable. But by the time the visitor had
entered the parlor, Mrs. Cliff had made up her mind to meet her as if
nothing unpleasant had ever happened between them, and then to await the
course of events. She was not at all pleased with the visit, but,
notwithstanding this, she had great curiosity to know what Miss Shott
had to say about the change in her circumstances.
Nancy Shott was different from other people. She was capable of drawing
the most astounding inferences and of coming to the most soul-irritating
conclusions, even on subjects which could not be otherwise than pleasant
to ordinary people.
"How do you do?" said Miss Shott, offering her hand. "I am glad to see
you back, Mrs. Cliff."
Mrs. Cliff replied that she was quite well and was glad to be back.
"You are not looking as hale as you did," said the visitor, as she
seated herself; "you must have lost a good many pounds, but that was to
be expected. From what I have heard, South America must be about as
unhealthy a place as any part of the world, and then on top of that,
living in Paris with water to drink which, I am told, is enough to make
anybody sick to look at it, is bound to have some sort of an effect upon
a person."
Mrs. Cliff smiled. She was used to this sort of talk from Nancy Shott.
"I am better than I was two years ago," she said, "and the last time I
was weighed I found that I had gained seven pounds."
"Well, there is no accounting for that," said her visitor, "except as we
grow old we are bound to show it, and sometimes aging looks like bad
health, and as to fat, that often comes as years go on, though as far as
I am concerned, I think it is a great misfortune to have more to carry,
as you get less and less able to carry it."
Mrs. Cliff might have said that that sort of thing would not be likely
to trouble Miss Shott, whose scantily furnished frame was sure to become
thinner and thinner as she became older and weaker, but she merely
smiled and waited to hear what would come next.
"I do not want to worry you," said Miss Shott; "but several people that
were here last night said you was not looking as they had hoped to see
you look, and I will just say to you, if it is anything connected with
your appetite, with a feeling of goneness in the mornings, you ought to
buy a quassia cup and drink the full of it at least three times a day."
Miss Shott knew that Mrs. Cliff absolutely detested the taste of
quassia. Mrs. Cliff was not annoyed. She hoped that her visitor would
soon get through with these prefatory remarks and begin to take the
stand, whatever it might be, which she had come there that morning to
take.
"There has been sickness here since you last left," said Miss Shott,
"and it has been where it was least to be expected, too. Barney
Thompson's little boy, the second son, has had the diphtheria, and where
he got it nobody knows, for it was vacation time, and he did not go to
school, and there was no other diphtheria anywhere in all this town, and
yet he had it and had it bad."
"He did not die?" said Mrs. Cliff.
"Oh no, he got over it, and perhaps it was a bad case and perhaps it was
not; but you may be sure I did not go near it, for I considered it my
duty to keep away, and I did keep away, but the trouble is--"
"And did none of the other children take it?" asked Mrs. Cliff.
"No, they didn't. But the trouble is, that when diphtheria or anything
like it comes up suddenly like this, without any reason that nobody can
see, it is just as likely to come up again without any reason, and I am
expecting to hear every day of another of them Thompson children being
stricken down; and I was very sorry indeed, Mrs. Cliff, to see, this
very morning, Willy Croup coming out of Barney Thompson's house and to
hear from her afterwards that she had been to order him to come here to
put up a new kitchen door, which I do not suppose is absolutely needed,
and even if it is, I am sure I would wait a good while before I would
have Barney Thompson come into my house with diphtheria, that very
minute, perhaps, in the throats of one or maybe more of his children;
but of course, if people choose to trifle with their own lives, it is
their own business."
"It was not real diphtheria," said Willy Croup, who happened to be
passing the open door at this moment; "it was only a bad sore throat,
and the child was well in two days."
"I suppose, of course," said Miss Shott, "that if the disease did get
into this house, Willy Croup would be the first to take it, because she
is such a spongy person that she takes almost anything that is in the
air and is not wholesome; but then you would not want to lose her, and
after a funeral in the house, no matter whose it may be, things is
always gloomy for a long time afterwards, and nobody can feel easy if it
was a catchin' disease that the person died of."
Mrs. Cliff was naturally desirous to hear all the domestic news of the
town, but she would have liked to have had something pleasant thrown in
among the gloomy tidings of which Miss Shott had made herself the
bearer, and so she made a little effort to turn the conversation.
"I shall be glad to go about and see my old friends and neighbors," she
said, "for I am interested in everything which has happened to them; but
I suppose it will be some days before I can settle down and feel ready
to go on in the old way. It seems to me as if I had been on the move
ever since I left here, although, of course, I was not travelling all
the time."
"I suppose nobody has told you," said Miss Shott, "that Edward Darley
has ploughed up that little pasture of his and planted it with young
apple trees. Now, it does seem to me that for a man like Edward Darley,
who comes of a consumptive family, and who has been coughin' regularly,
to my certain knowledge, for more than a year, to go and plant apple
trees, which he can't expect to live to see bear fruit, is nothing more
or less than a wicked waste of money, time, and labor. I suppose if I
was to go and tell him so he would not like that, but I do not know as
I ought to consider it. There are people in this world who'll never know
anything if they're not told!"
Five other topics of the town, each of a doleful nature and each
indicating an evident depravity in a citizen of Plainton, were related
by Miss Shott, and then she arose to go.
"I hope you'll remember what I told you about Thompson's children," she
said, as she walked to the front door, "and if I was you, I'd have that
kitchen fumigated after he has put the door in!"
"There now!" said Miss Shott to herself, as she proudly walked down the
street. "The Widow Cliff can't say I've done any toadying; and, no
matter what she's got, and what she hasn't got, she can't say to herself
that I consider her any better able to give me twenty-five cents than
she was when she was here before; or that it makes any difference to me
whether she has much or little!"
CHAPTER IV
A LAUNCH INTO A NEW LIFE
It required the greater part of two days for Mrs. Cliff and Willy to
open the seven trunks, and properly display and dispose of the various
articles and goods, astonishing in their variety and beauty, and
absolutely amazing when the difference between the price paid for them
and what they would have cost in New York was considered.
During these fascinating operations it so happened that at one time or
another nearly all of Mrs. Cliff's female friends dropped in, and all
were wonderfully impressed by what they saw and what they heard; but
although Miss Shott did not come there during the grand opening, it was
not long before she knew the price and something of the general
appearance of nearly everything that Mrs. Cliff had brought with her.
Among the contents of the trunks were a great many presents for Mrs.
Cliff's friends, and whenever Miss Shott heard of one of these gifts,
she made a remark to the effect that she had not a doubt in the world
that the Widow Cliff knew better than to bring her a present, for she
would not want the thing, whatever it was, whether a glass pitcher or a
pin-cushion, flung back at her after the fashion that she had set
herself at a time when everybody was trying their best to be kind to
her.
It was clearly a fact, that through the influence of the seven trunks
Mrs. Cliff was becoming a very popular woman, and Miss Shott did not
like it at all. She had never had any faith--at least she said so--in
those lumps of gold found in a hole in some part of the world that
nobody had ever heard of; and had not hesitated to say that fortunes
founded on such wild-goose stories as these should not even be
considered by people of good sense who worked for their living, or had
incomes which they could depend on. But the dress goods, the ribbons,
the gloves, the little clocks, the shoes, the parasols, the breast-pins,
the portfolios of pictures, the jewelry, the rugs and table covers, and
hundreds of other beautiful and foreign things, were a substantial
evidence that Mrs. Cliff's money was not all moonshine.
It was very pleasant for Mrs. Cliff to bring out her treasures to
display them to her enthusiastic friends, and to arrange them in her
house, and to behold the rapturous delight of Willy Croup from early
morn until bed-time.
But the seven empty trunks had been carried up into the garret, and now
Mrs. Cliff set her mind to the solution of the question--how was she to
begin her new life in her old home? It must be a new life, for to live
as she had lived even in the days of her highest prosperity during her
husband's life would be absurd and even wicked. With such an income she
must endeavor as far as was possible to her to live in a manner worthy
of it; but one thing she was determined upon--she would not alienate her
friends by climbing to the top of her money and looking down upon them.
None of them knew how high she would be if she were to perch herself on
the very top of that money, but even if she climbed up a little way,
they might still feel that they were very small in her sight.
No, the money should always be kept in the background. It might be as
high as the sky and as glorious as a sunset, but she would be on the
ground with the people of Plainton, and as far as was possible, they
should all enjoy the fine weather together.
She could not repress a feeling of pride, for she would be looked upon
as one of the principal persons--if not the principal person--in
Plainton; but she could not believe that any real friend could possibly
object to that.
If her husband had lived and prospered, it was probable he would have
been the principal man in Plainton, the minister always excepted; but
now there was no reason whatever why any one should object to her being
a principal personage, and, in this case, she could not see why the
minister's wife should be excepted.
But Plainton was to be her home; the Plainton people were to be her
friends. How should she set about using her money in such a way that she
should not be driven forth to some large city to live as ordinary
wealthy people live, in a fashion to which she was utterly unsuited, and
which possessed for her no attractions whatever?
Of course, she had early determined to devote a large sum to charitable
purposes, for she would have thought herself a very unworthy woman if
her wealth had not benefited others than herself, but this was an easy
matter to attend to. The amount she had set aside for charity was not
permanently invested, and, through the advice of Mr. Perley, there would
be no difficulty in devoting this to suitable objects. Already she had
confidentially spoken to her pastor on the subject, and had found him
enthusiastic in his desire to help her in every possible way in her
benevolent purposes. But who was there who could help her in regard to
herself? Who was there who could tell her how she ought to live so as
to gain all the good that her money should give her, and yet not lose
that which was to her the highest object of material existence,--a happy
and prosperous life among her old friends in her native town?
Should she choose to elevate herself in the social circle by living as
ordinary very rich people live, she could not hope to elevate her
friends in that way, although she would be glad enough to do it in many
cases, and there would be a gap between them which would surely grow
wider and wider; and yet here was this money coming in upon her in a
steady stream day by day, and how was she going to make herself happier
with it?
She must do that, or, she believed, it would be her duty to hand it over
to somebody else who was better adapted by nature to use it.
"If I did not take so much pleasure in things which cost so little and
which are so easy for me to buy," said poor Mrs. Cliff to herself, "or
if I did not have so much money, I am sure I should get on a great deal
better."
Mrs. Cliff's belief that she must not long delay in selecting some sort
of station in life, and endeavoring to live up to it, was soon
strengthened by Willy Croup. During the time of the trunk opening, and
for some days afterwards, when all her leisure hours were occupied with
the contemplation and consideration of her own presents, Willy had been
perfectly contented to let things go on in the old way, or any way, but
now the incongruity of Mrs. Cliff's present mode of living, and the
probable amount of her fortune, began to impress itself upon her.
"It does seem to me," said she, "that it's a sin and a shame that you
should be goin' about this house just as you used to do, helpin' me
upstairs and downstairs, as if you couldn't afford to hire nobody. You
ought to have a girl, and a good one, and for the matter of that, you
might have two of 'em, I suppose. And even if it wasn't too much for you
to be workin' about when there's no necessity for it, the people are
beginnin' to talk, and that ought to be stopped."
"What are they talking about?" asked Mrs. Cliff.
"Well, it's not everybody that's talkin'," returned Willy, "and I guess
that them that does gets their opinions from one quarter, but I've heard
people say that it's pretty plain that all you got out of that gold mine
you spent in buyin' the things you brought home in your trunks; for if
you didn't, you wouldn't be livin' like this, helpin' to do your own
housework and cookin'."
In consequence of this conversation, a servant-of-all-work was employed;
for Mrs. Cliff did not know what she would do with two women until she
had made a change in her household arrangements; and with this as a
beginning, our good widow determined to start out on her career as a
rich woman who intended to enjoy herself in the fashion she liked best.
She sent for Mr. Thompson, the carpenter, and consulted with him in
regard to the proposed additions to her house, but when she had talked
for a time, she became disheartened. She found that it would be
necessary to dig a new cellar close to her present premises; that there
would be stones, and gravel, and lime, and sand, and carts and horses,
and men, and dirt; and that it would be some months before all the
hammering, and the sawing, and the planing, and the plastering, and
tinwork could be finished, and all this would be going on under her eye,
and close to her ears during those first months in which she had
proposed to be so happy in her home. She could not bear to give the word
to dig, and pound, and saw. It was not like building a new house, for
that would not be near her, and the hub-bub of its construction would
not annoy her.
So she determined she would not begin a new dining-room at present. She
would wait a little while until she had had some good of her house as it
was, and then she would feel better satisfied to live in the midst of
pounding, banging, and all-pervading dust; but she would do something.
She would have the fence which separated the sidewalk from her front
yard newly painted. She had long wanted to have that done, but had not
been able to afford it.
But when Mr. Thompson went to look at the fence, he told her that it
would be really a waste of money to paint it, for in many places it was
old and decayed, and it would be much wiser to put up a new one and
paint that.
Again Mrs. Cliff hesitated. If that fence had to be taken down, and the
posts dug up, and new posts put in, and the flower-bed which ran along
the inside of it destroyed, it would be just as well to wait until the
other work began and have it all done at once; so she told Mr. Thompson
he need not send a painter, for she would make the old fence do for a
while.
Mrs. Cliff sighed a little as the carpenter walked away, but there were
other things to do. There was the pasture lot at the rear of her garden,
and she could have a cow, and there was the little barn, and she could
have a horse. The idea of the horse pleased her more than anything she
had yet thought of in connection with her wealth.
In her days of prosperity it had been her greatest pleasure to drive in
her phaëton with her good brown horse, generally with Willy Croup by her
side; to stop at shops or to make calls upon friends, and to make those
little excursions into the surrounding country in which she and Willy
both delighted. They had sometimes gone a long distance and had taken
their dinner with them, and Willy was really very good in unharnessing
the horse and watering him at a brook, and in giving him some oats.
To return to these old joys was a delightful prospect, and Mrs. Cliff
made inquiries about her horse, which had been sold in the town; but he
was gone. He had been sold to a drover, and his whereabouts no one knew.
So she went to Mr. Williams, the keeper of the hotel, who knew more
about horses than anybody else, and consulted with him on the subject of
a new steed. She told him just what she wanted: a gentle horse which
she could drive herself, and one which Willy could hold when she went
into a house or a shop.
Now, it so happened that Mr. Williams had just such a horse, and when
Mrs. Cliff had seen it, and when Willy had come up to look at it, and
when the matter had been talked about in all the aspects in which it
presented itself to Mrs. Cliff's mind, she bought the animal, and it was
taken to her stable, where Andrew Marks, a neighbor, was engaged to take
care of it.
The next morning Mrs. Cliff and Willy took a drive a little way out of
town, and they both agreed that this horse, which was gray, was a great
deal better traveller than the old brown, and a much handsomer animal;
but both of them also agreed that they did not believe that they would
ever learn to love him as they had their old horse.
Still he was very easy to drive, and he went along so pleasantly,
without needing the whip in the least, that Mrs. Cliff said to herself,
that for the first time since her return she really felt herself a rich
woman.
"If everything," she thought, "should come to me as this horse came to
me, how delightful my life would be! When I wanted him, I found him. I
did not have to trouble myself in the least about the price; I simply
paid it, and ordered him sent home. Now, that sort of thing is what
makes a person feel truly rich."
When they had gone far enough, and had reached a wide place in the road,
Mrs. Cliff turned and started back to Plainton. But now the horse began
to be a different kind of a horse. With his face towards his home, he
set out to trot as fast as he could, and when Mrs. Cliff, not liking
such a rapid pace, endeavored to pull him in, she found it very hard to
do, and when she began to saw his mouth, thinking that would restrain
his ardor, he ambled and capered, and Mrs. Cliff was obliged to let him
resume his rapid gait.
He was certainly a very hard-mouthed horse, going home, and Mrs. Cliff's
arms ached, and Willy Croup's heart quaked, long before they reached the
town. When they reached Plainton, Mrs. Cliff began to be afraid that he
would gallop through the streets, and she told Willy that if he did, she
must not scream, but must sit quietly, and she would endeavor to steer
him clear of the vehicles and people.
But although he did not gallop, the ardent gray seemed to travel faster
after he entered the town, and Mrs. Cliff, who was getting very red in
the face from her steady tugging at the reins, thought it wise not to
attempt to go home, but to let her horse go straight to the hotel
stables where he had lived.
When Mrs. Cliff had declared to Mr. Williams that that horse would never
suit her, that she would not be willing to drive it, and would not even
think of going into a house and leaving Willy Croup to hold him, he was
very much surprised, and said that he had not a gentler horse in his
stable, and he did not believe there was one in the town.
"All horses," said he, "want to go home, especially at dinner-time."
"But the old brown did not," urged Mrs. Cliff. "That is the sort of
horse I want."
"Some very old beast might please you better," said he; "but really,
Mrs. Cliff, that is not the sort of horse you should have. He would die
or break down in a little while, and then you would have to get another.
What you should do is to have a good horse and a driver. You might get a
two-seated carriage, either open or closed, and go anywhere and
everywhere, and never think of the horse."
That was not the thing she longed for; that would not bring back the
happy days when she drove the brown through the verdant lanes. If she
must have a driver, she might as well hire a cab and be driven about.
But she told Mr. Williams to get her a suitable vehicle, and she would
have Andrew Marks to drive her; and she and Willy Croup walked sadly
home.
As to the cow, she succeeded better. She bought a fairly good one, and
Willy undertook to milk her and to make butter.
"Now, what have I done so far?" said Mrs. Cliff, on the evening of the
day when the cow came home. "I have a woman to cook, I have a new
kitchen door, and I have a cow! I do not count the horse and the wagon,
for if I do not drive, myself, I shall not feel that they are mine in
the way that I want them to be."
CHAPTER V
A FUR-TRIMMED OVERCOAT AND A SILK HAT
Mrs. Cliff now began to try very hard to live as she ought to live,
without pretensions or snobbery, but in a style becoming, in some
degree, her great fortune.
There was one thing she determined to do immediately, and that was, to
begin a series of hospitalities,--and it made her feel proud to think
that she could do this and do it handsomely, and yet do it in the old
home where everybody knew she had for years been obliged to practise the
strictest economy.
She gave a dinner to which she invited her most select friends. Mr. and
Mrs. Perley were there, and the Misses Thorpedyke, two maiden ladies who
constituted the family of the highest social pretension of Plainton.
There were other people who were richer, but Miss Eleanor Thorpedyke,
now a lady of nearly seventy, and her sister Barbara, some ten years
younger, belonged to the very best family in that part of the country,
and were truly the aristocrats of the place.
But they had always been very friendly with Mrs. Cliff, and they were
glad to come to her dinner. The other guests were all good people, and a
dinner-party of more distinction could not have been collected in that
town.
But this dinner did not go off altogether smoothly. If the people had
come merely to eat, they must have been abundantly satisfied, for
everything was of the very best and well cooked, Mrs. Cliff and Willy
having seen to that; but there were certain roughnesses and hitches in
the management of the dinner which disturbed Mrs. Cliff. In her travels
and at the hotels where she had lived she had seen a great deal of good
service, and she knew what it was.
Willy, who, being a relative, should really have come to the table, had
decidedly declined to do so, and had taken upon herself the principal
part of the waiting, assisted by the general servant and a small girl
who had been called in. But the dining-room was very small, some of the
chairs were but a little distance from the wall, and it was evident that
Willy had not a true appreciation of the fact that in recent years she
had grown considerably rounder and plumper than she used to be; and it
made Mrs. Cliff's blood run cold to see how she bumped the back of Mr.
Perley's chair, as she thrust herself between it and the wall.
The small girl had to be told almost everything that she must do, and
the general servant, who did not like to wait on table, only came in
when she was called and left immediately when she had done what she had
been called for.
When the guests had gone, Mrs. Cliff declared to Willy that that was the
last large dinner she would give in that house. "It was not a dinner
which a woman of my means should offer to her friends." Willy was
amazed.
"I don't see how it could have been better," said she, "unless you had
champagne, and I know Mr. Perley wouldn't have liked that. Everything on
the table was just as good as it could be."
But Mrs. Cliff shook her head. She knew that she had attempted something
for which her present resources were insufficient. After this she
invited people to dinner once or twice a week, but the company was
always very small and suited to the resources of the house.
"I will go on this way for a while," thought the good lady, "and after a
time I will begin to spread out and do things in a different style."
Several times she drove over to Harrington, a large town some five miles
away, which contained a furniture factory, and there she purchased many
articles which would be suitable for the house, always securing the best
things for her purposes, but frequently regretting that certain
beautiful and imposing pieces of furniture were entirely unsuited to the
capacity of her rooms and hallways. But when her dining-room should be
finished, and the room above it, she would have better opportunity of
gratifying her taste for handsome wood in imposing designs. Then it
might be that Harrington would not be able to give her anything good
enough.
Her daily mail was now much larger than it ever had been before.
Business people sent her cards and circulars, and every now and then she
received letters calling her attention to charities or pressing personal
needs of the writers, but there were not very many of these; for
although it was generally known that Mrs. Cliff had come into a
fortune, her manner of living seemed also a matter of public knowledge.
Even the begging letters were couched in very moderate terms; but all
these Mrs. Cliff took to Mr. Perley, and, by his advice, she paid
attention to but very few of them.
Day by day Mrs. Cliff endeavored to so shape and direct her fortunes
that they might make her happy in the only ways in which she could be
happy, but her efforts to do so did not always gain for her the approval
of her fellow townspeople. There were some who thought that a woman who
professed to have command of money should do a good many things which
Mrs. Cliff did not do, and there were others who did not hesitate to
assert that a woman who lived as Mrs. Cliff should not do a great many
things which she did do, among which things some people included the
keeping of a horse and carriage. It was conceded, of course, that all
this was Mrs. Cliff's own business. She had paid the money she had
borrowed to go to South America; she had been very kind to some of the
poor people of the town, and it was thought by some had been foolishly
munificent to old Mrs. Bradley, who, from being a very poor person
threatened with the loss of her home, was now an independent
householder, and enjoyed an annuity sufficient to support her.
More than that, Mrs. Cliff had been very generous in regard to the
church music. It was not known exactly how much she had given towards
this object, but there were those who said that she must have given her
means a considerable strain when she made her contribution. That is, if
the things were to be done which Mr. Perley talked about.
When Mrs. Cliff heard what had been said upon this subject,--and Willy
Croup was generally very well able to keep her informed in regard to
what the people of the town said about her,--she thought that the
gossips would have been a good deal astonished if they had known how
much she had really given to the church, and that they would have been
absolutely amazed if they knew how much Mr. Perley had received for
general charities. And then she thought, with a tinge of sadness, how
very much surprised Mr. Perley would have been if he had known how much
more she was able to give away without feeling its loss.
Weeks passed on, the leaves turned red and yellow upon the trees, the
evenings and mornings grew colder and colder, and Mrs. Cliff did
everything she could towards the accomplishment of what now appeared to
her in the light of a great duty in her life,--the proper expenditure of
her income and appropriation of her great fortune.
Her labors were not becoming more cheerful. Day after day she said to
herself that she was not doing what she ought to do, and that it was
full time that she should begin to do something better, but what that
better thing was she could not make up her mind. Even the improvements
she contemplated were, after all, such mere trifles.
It was a very cold morning in October when Mrs. Cliff went into her
parlor and said to Willy that there was one thing she could do,--she
could have a rousing, comfortable fire without thinking whether wood was
five, ten, or twenty dollars per cord. When Willy found that Mrs. Cliff
wanted to make herself comfortable before a fine blazing fire, she
seemed in doubt.
"I don't know about the safety of it," she said. "That chimney's in a
pretty bad condition; the masons told us so years ago, and nothin' has
ever been done to it! There have been fires in it, but they have been
little ones; and if I was you, I wouldn't have too large a blaze in that
fireplace until the chimney has been made all right!"
Mrs. Cliff was annoyed. "Well then, Willy, I wish you would go for the
mason immediately, and tell him to come here and repair the chimney.
It's perfectly ridiculous that I can't have a fire in my own parlor when
I am able to have a chimney as high and as big as Bunker Hill Monument
if I wanted it!"
Willy Croup smiled. She did not believe that Mrs. Cliff really knew how
much such a chimney would cost, but she said, "You have got to remember,
you know, that we can't have the Cuthberts here to dinner to-morrow if
the masons come to work at that chimney. Ten to one they will have to
take the most part of it down, and we shall be in a general mess here
for a week."
Mrs. Cliff sat down with a sigh. "You need not mind to have the wood
brought in," she said; "just give me a few sticks and some kindling, so
that I can give things a little air of cheerfulness."
As she sat before the gently blazing little fire, Mrs. Cliff felt that
things needed an air of cheerfulness. She had that morning been making
calculations, and, notwithstanding all she had bought, all she had done,
and even including with the most generous margin all she had planned to
do, her income was gaining upon her in a most discouraging way.
"I am not fit for it," she said to herself. "I don't know how to live as
I want to live, and I won't live as I don't want to live. The whole
business is too big for me. I don't know how to manage it. I ought to
give up my means to somebody who knows how to use them, and stay here
myself with just enough money to make me happy."
For the fortieth time she considered the question of laying all her
troubles before Mr. Perley, but she knew her pastor. The great mass of
her fortune would quickly be swallowed up in some grand missionary
enterprise; and this would not suit Mrs. Cliff. No matter how much she
was discouraged, no matter how difficult it was to see her way before
her, no matter how great a load she felt her wealth to be, there was
always before her a glimmering sense of grand possibilities. What they
were she could not now see or understand, but she would not willingly
give them up.
[Illustration: THE GENTLEMAN RAISED HIS HAT AND ASKED IF MRS. CLIFF
LIVED THERE]
She was an elderly woman, but she came of a long-lived family, all of
whom had lived in good health until the end of their days, and if there
was any grand, golden felicity which was possible to her, she felt
that there was reason to believe she would live long to enjoy it when
she wanted it.
One morning as Mrs. Cliff sat thinking over these things, there was a
knock at the front door, and, of course, Willy Croup ran to open it. No
matter where she was, or no matter what she was doing, Willy always went
to the door if she could, because she had so great a desire to know who
was there.
This time it was a gentleman, a very fine gentleman, with a high silk
hat and a handsome overcoat trimmed with fur--fur on the collar, fur on
the sleeves, and fur down the front. Willy had never seen such a coat.
It was October and it was cool, but there was no man in Plainton who
would have worn such a coat as that so early in the season even if he
had one.
The gentleman had dark eyes and a very large mustache, and he carried a
cane and wore rather bright tan-colored gloves. All these things Willy
observed in an instant, for she was very quick in taking notice of
people's clothes and general appearance.
The gentleman raised his hat and asked if Mrs. Cliff lived there. Now
Willy thought he must be an extraordinary fine gentleman, for how should
he know that she was not a servant, and in those parts gentlemen did not
generally raise their hats to girls who opened front doors.
The gentleman was admitted and was ushered into the parlor, where sat
Mrs. Cliff. She was a little surprised at the sight of this visitor, who
came in with his hat on, but who took it off and made her a low bow as
soon as he saw her. But she thought she appreciated the situation, and
she hardened her heart.
A strange man, so finely dressed, and with such manners, must have come
for money, and Mrs. Cliff had already learned to harden her heart
towards strangers who solicited. But the hardness of her heart utterly
disappeared in her amazement when this gentleman, having pulled off his
right glove, advanced toward her, holding out his hand.
"You don't remember me, Mrs. Cliff?" he said in a loud, clear voice. "No
wonder, for I am a good deal changed, but it is not the same with you.
You are the same as ever--I declare you are!"
Mrs. Cliff took the proffered hand, and looked into the face of the
speaker. There was something there which seemed familiar, but she had
never known such a fine gentleman as this. She thought over the people
whom she had seen in France and in California, but she could not
recollect this face.
"It's a mean thing to be puzzlin' you, Mrs. Cliff," said the stranger,
with a cheery smile. "I'm George Burke, seaman on the _Castor_, where I
saw more of you, Mrs. Cliff, than I've ever seen since; for though we
have both been a good deal jumbled up since, we haven't been jumbled up
together, so I don't wonder if you don't remember me, especially as I
didn't wear clothes like these on the _Castor_. Not by any means, Mrs.
Cliff!"
"I remember you," she said, and she shook his hand warmly. "I remember
you, and you had a mate named Edward Shirley."
"Yes, indeed!" said Mr. Burke, "and he's all right, and I'm all right,
and how are you?"
The overcoat with the fur trimmings came off, and, with the hat, the
cane, and the gloves, was laid upon a chair, and Burke and Mrs. Cliff
sat down to talk over old times and old friends.
CHAPTER VI
A TEMPERANCE LARK
As Mrs. Cliff sat and talked with George Burke, she forgot the
calculations she had been making, she forgot her perplexities and her
anxieties concerning the rapid inroads which her income was making upon
her ability to dispose of it, in the recollection of the
good-fellowships which the presence of her companion recalled.
But Mr. Burke could give her no recent news of Captain Horn and Edna,
she having heard from them later than he had; and the only one of the
people of the _Castor_ of whom he could tell her was Edward Shirley, who
had gone into business.
He had bought a share in a shipyard, and, as he was a man who had a
great idea about the lines of a vessel, and all that sort of thing, he
had determined to put his money into that business. He was a long-headed
fellow, and Burke had no doubt but that he would soon hear of some fine
craft coming from the yard of his old shipmate.
"But how about yourself, Mr. Burke? I want to know what has happened to
you, and what you intend doing, and how you chanced to be coming this
way."
"Oh, I will tell you everything that has happened to me," said Mr.
Burke, "and it won't take long; but first let me ask you something, Mrs.
Cliff?" and as he spoke he quietly rose and shut the parlor door.
"Now then," said he, as he seated himself, "we have all been in the same
box, or, I should say, in the same boxes of different kinds, and
although I may not have the right to call myself a friend, I am just as
friendly to you as if I was, and feel as if people who have been through
what we have ought to stand by each other even after they've got through
their hardest rubs.
"Now, Mrs. Cliff, has anything happened to you? Have you had any
set-backs? I know that this is a mighty queer world, and that even the
richest people can often come down with a sudden thump just as if they
had slipped on the ice."
Mrs. Cliff smiled. "Nothing has happened to me," she said. "I have had
no set-backs, and I am just as rich to-day,--I should say a great deal
richer, than I was on the day when Captain Horn made the division of the
treasure. But I know very well why you thought something had happened to
me. You did not expect to find me living in this little house."
"No, by the Lord Harry, I didn't!" exclaimed Burke, slapping his knee.
"You must excuse me, Mrs. Cliff, for speaking out in that way, but
really I never was so much surprised as when I came into your front
yard. I thought I would find you in the finest house in the place until
you could have a stately mansion built somewhere in the outskirts of the
town, where there would be room enough for a park. But when I came to
this house, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps some beastly bank had
broke, and that your share of the golden business had been swept away.
Things like that do happen to women, you know, and I suppose they always
will; but I am mighty glad to hear you are all right!
"But, as you have asked me to tell you my story, I will make short work
of it, and then I would like to hear what has happened to you, as much
as you please to tell me about it.
"Now, when I got my money, Mrs. Cliff, which, when compared to what your
share must have been, was like a dory to a three-mast schooner, but
still quite enough for me, and, perhaps, more than enough if a public
vote could be taken on the subject, I was in Paris, a jolly place for a
rich sailor, and I said to myself,--
"'Now, Mr. Burke,' said I, for I might as well begin by using good
manners, 'the general disposition of a sea-faring man with a lot of
money is to go on a lark, or, perhaps, a good many larks, and so get rid
of it and then ship again before the mast for fourteen dollars per
month, or thereabouts.'
"But I made up my mind right there on the spot that that sort of thing
wouldn't suit me. The very idea of shipping again on a merchant vessel
made the blood run cold inside of me, and I swore to myself that I
wouldn't do it.
"To be sure, I wouldn't give up all notion of a lark. A sailor with
money,--and I don't believe there ever was an able-bodied seaman with
more money than I had,--who doesn't lark, at least to some degree, has
no right to call himself a whole-souled mariner; so I made up my mind to
have one lark and then stop."
Mrs. Cliff's countenance clouded. "I am sorry, Mr. Burke," said she,
"that you thought it necessary to do that. I do hope you didn't go on
one of those horrible--sprees, do they call them?"
"Oh no!" interrupted Burke, "I didn't do anything of that kind. If I'd
begun with a bottle, I'd have ended with nothing but a cork, and a badly
burnt one at that. No ma'am! drinking isn't in my line. I don't take
anything of that sort except at meals, and then only the best wine in
genteel quantities. But I was bound to have one lark, and then I would
stop and begin to live like a merchant-tailor, with no family nor poor
relations."
"But what did you do?" asked Mrs. Cliff. "If it was a lark without
liquor, I want to hear about it."
"It was a temperance lark, ma'am," said Burke, "and this is what it was.
"Now, though I have been to sea ever since I was a boy, I never had
command of any kind of craft, and it struck me that I would like to
finish up my life on the ocean wave by taking command of a vessel. It
is generally understood that riches will give you anything you want, and
I said to myself that my riches should give me that. I didn't want a
sailin' vessel. I was tired of sailin' vessels. I wanted a steamer, and
when I commanded a steamer for a little while I would stop short and be
a landsman for the rest of my life.
"So I went up to Brest, where I thought I might find some sort of
steamer which might suit me, and in that harbor I did find an English
steamer, which had discharged her cargo and was expectin' to sail again
pretty much in ballast and brandy, so far as I could make out. I went to
this vessel and I made an offer to her captain to charter her for an
excursion of one week--that was all I wanted.
"Well, I'm not going to bother you, Mrs. Cliff, with all that was said
and done about this little business, which seemed simple enough, but
which wasn't. There are people in this world who think that if you have
money you can buy anything you want, but such people might as well get
ready to change their opinions if they ever expect to come into money."
"That is true," said Mrs. Cliff; "every word of it is true, as I have
found out for myself!"
"Well," continued Burke, "there had to be a lot of telegraphin' to the
owners in London and a general fuss with the officers of the port about
papers, and all that, but I got the business through all right; for if
money won't get you everything, it's a great help in making things slip
along easy. And so one fine afternoon I found myself on board that
steamer as commander for one week.
"Of course, I didn't want to give orders to the crew, but I intended to
give my orders to the captain, and tell him what he was to do and what
he was not to do for one week. He didn't like that very much, for he was
inclined to bulldogism, but I paid him extra wages, and he agreed to
knuckle under to me.
"So I gave him orders to sail out of the harbor and straight to the
Island of Ushant, some twenty-five miles to the west of northwest.
"'There's no use going there,' said the captain,--his name was
Dork,--'there's nothing on that blasted bit of rock for you to see.
There's no port I could run this steamer into.'
"I had been studying out my business on the chart, and this little
island just suited my idea, and though the name was 'Ushant,' I said to
him, 'You shall,' and I ordered him to sail to that island and lay to a
mile or two to the westward; and as to the landing, he needn't talk
about that until I mentioned it myself.
"So when we got about a couple of miles to the west of Ushant, we lay
to. Now I knew we were on the forty-eighth parallel of latitude, for I
had looked that out on the chart, so I said to Captain Dork,--
"'Now, sir!' says I, 'I want you to head your vessel, sir, due west, and
then to steam straight ahead for a hundred miles, keepin' your vessel
just as near as you can on that line of latitude.'"
"I see!" said Mrs. Cliff, very much interested. "If he once got on that
line of latitude and kept sailing west without turning one way or the
other, he would be bound to keep on it."
"That's exactly it!" said Mr. Burke. "'Twas pretty near midnight when we
started off to run along the forty-eighth parallel, but I kept my eyes
on the man at the wheel and on the compass, and I let them know that
that ship was under the command of an able-bodied seaman who knew what
he was about, and if they skipped to one side of that line or to the
other he would find it out in no time.
"I went below once to take a nap, but, as I promised the fellow at the
wheel ten shillings if he would keep her head due west, and told him he
would be sure to wake me up if he didn't, I felt certain we wouldn't
skip the line of latitude.
"Well, that steamer, which was called the _Duke of Dorchester_, and
which was a vessel of not more than a thousand tons, wasn't much of a
sailer, or perhaps they was saving coal, I don't know which, and, not
knowing how much coal ought to be used, I kept my mouth shut on that
point; but I had the log thrown a good deal, and I found that we never
quite came up to ten knots an hour, and when we took an observation at
noon the next day, we saw that we hadn't quite done the hundred miles;
but a little before one o'clock we did it, and then I ordered the
captain to stop the engine and lay to.
"There was a brig about a mile away, and when she saw us layin' to, she
put about and made for us, and when she was near enough she hailed to
know if anything was the matter. She was a French brig, but Captain Dork
understood her, and I told him to bid her 'Good morning,' and to tell
her that nothin' was the matter, but that we were just stoppin' to rest.
I don't know what he did tell her, but she put about her helm and was
off again on her own business.
"'Now,' said I to Captain Dork, 'I want you to back this steamer due
east to the Island of Ushant.'
"He looked at me and began to swear. He took me for a maniac,--a wild,
crazy man, and told me the best thing I could do would be to go below
and turn in, and he would take me back to my friends, if I had any.
"I didn't want to tell him what I was up to, but I found I had to, and
so I explained to him that I was a rich sailor takin' a lark, and the
lark I wanted to take was, to sail on a parallel of latitude a hundred
miles in a steamer, and then to back that steamer along that same
parallel to the place where she started from. I didn't believe that
there was ever a ship in the world that had done that, and bein' on a
lark, I wanted to do it, and was willin' to pay for it; and if his
engineers and his crew grumbled about backing the steamer for a hundred
miles, he could explain to them how the matter stood, and tell them that
bein' on a lark I was willin' to pay for all extra trouble I might put
them to, and for any disturbances in their minds which might rise from
sailin' a vessel in a way which didn't seem to be accordin' to the
ordinary rules of navigation.
"Now, when Captain Dork knew that I was a rich sailor on a lark, he
understood me, and he made no more objections, though he said he
wouldn't have spent his money in that way; and when he told his crew and
his engineers and men about the extra pay, they understood the matter,
and they agreed to back her along the forty-eighth parallel just as nigh
as they could until they lay to two miles west of Ushant.
"So back we went, and they kept her due east just as nigh as they could,
and they seemed to take an interest in it, as if all of them wanted me
to have as good a lark as I could for my money, and we didn't skip that
parallel very much, although it wasn't an easy job, I can tell you, to
keep her head due west and her stern due east, and steam backwards. They
had to rig up the compass abaft the wheel, and do some other things that
you wouldn't understand, madam, such as running a spar out to stern to
take sight by."
"I declare," said Mrs. Cliff, "that sort of sailing must have astonished
any ship that saw it. Did you meet any other vessels?"
"Oh yes," said Burke. "After daybreak we fell in with a good many sail
and some steamers, and most of them ran close and hailed us, but there
wasn't any answer to give them, except that we were returning to port
and didn't want no help; but some of the skippers of the smaller crafts
were so full of curiosity that they stuck to us, and when we arrived off
Ushant, which wasn't until nearly dark the next day, the _Duke of
Dorchester_ had a convoy of five sloops, two schooners, a brig, eight
pilot boats, and four tugs."
Although Mr. Burke had said that he was going to make very short work
with his story, it had already occupied a good deal of time, and he was
not half through with it; but Mrs. Cliff listened with the greatest
interest, and the rich sailor went on with his recital of adventures.
"Now, when I had finished scoring that forty-eighth parallel backward
and forward for a hundred miles, I took out my purse and I paid that
captain and all the crew what I promised to give them, and then we
steamed back to Brest, where I told him to drop anchor and make himself
comfortable.
"I stayed on board for a day and a night just to get my fill feeling I
was in command of a steamer, before I gave up a sea-faring life forever.
I threw up the rest of the week that I was entitled to and went ashore,
and my lark was over.
"I went to England and took passage for home, and I had a first-class
state-room, and laid in a lot of good clothes before I started. I don't
think I ever had greater comfort in my life than sittin' on deck,
smokin' a good cigar, and watchin' the able-bodied seamen at their work.
"I hope I'm not tiring you, madam, but I'm trying to cut things as short
as I can. It's often said that a sailor is all at sea when he is on
shore, but I was a country fellow before I was a sailor, and land doings
come naturally to me when I fix my mind on them.
"I'd made up my mind I was going to build my mother a house on Cape Cod,
but when I got home I thought it better to buy her one already built,
and that's what I did, and I stayed there with her a little while, but I
didn't like it. I'd had a notion of having another house near my
mother's, but I gave up that. There's too much sea about Cape Cod.
"Now, she liked it, for she's a regular sailor's mother, but I couldn't
feel that I was really a rich fellow livin' ashore until I got out of
hearin' of the ocean, and out of smellin' of salt and tar, so I made up
my mind that I'd go inland and settle somewhere on a place of my own,
where I might have command of some sort of farm.
"I didn't know just exactly what I wanted, nor just exactly where I
wanted to go, so I thought it best to look around a little and hold
council with somebody or other. I couldn't hold council with my mother,
because she wanted me to buy a ship and take command of her. And then I
thought of Captain Horn, and goin' to ask him. But the captain is a
great man--"
"Indeed he is!" exclaimed Mrs. Cliff. "We all know that!"
"But he is off on his own business," continued Burke, "and what sort of
a princely concern he's got on hand I don't know. Anyway, he wouldn't
want me followin' him about and botherin' him, and so I thought of
everybody I could, and at last it struck me that there wasn't anybody
better than you, Mrs. Cliff, to give me the points I wanted, for I
always liked you, Mrs. Cliff, and I consider you a woman of good sense
down to the keel. And, as I heard you were livin' in sort of a country
place, I thought you'd be the very person that I could come and talk to
and get points.
"I felt a hankerin', anyway, after some of the old people of the
_Castor_; for, after having had all that money divided among us, it made
me feel as if we belonged to the same family. I suppose that was one
reason why I felt a sort of drawing to you, you know. Anyway, I knew
where you lived, and I came right here, and arrived this morning. After
I'd taken a room at the hotel, I asked for your house and came straight
here."
"And very glad am I to see you, Mr. Burke!" said Mrs. Cliff, speaking
honestly from the bottom of her heart.
She had not known Burke very well, but she had always looked upon him as
a fine, manly sailor; and now that he had come to her, she was conscious
of the family feeling which he had spoken of, and she was very glad to
see him.
She saw that Burke was very anxious to know why she was living in a
plain fashion in this unpretentious house, but she found it would be
very difficult to explain the matter to him. Hers was not a
straightforward tale, which she could simply sit and tell, and,
moreover, although she liked Burke and thought it probable that he was a
man of a very good heart, she did not believe that he was capable of
advising her in the perplexities which her wealth had thrown about her.
Still, she talked to him and told him what she thought she could make
him properly understand, and so, from one point to another, she went on
until she had given the ex-sailor a very good idea of the state of her
mind in regard to what she was doing, and what she thought she ought to
do.
When Mrs. Cliff had finished speaking, Burke thrust his hands into his
pockets, leaned back in his chair, and looked at the ceiling of the
room, the walls, and the floor. He wanted to say something, but he was
not prepared to do so. His mind, still nautical, desired to take an
observation and determine the latitude and longitude of Mrs. Cliff, but
the skies were very much overcast.
At this moment Willy Croup knocked at the parlor door, and when Mrs.
Cliff went to her, she asked if the gentleman was going to stay to
dinner.
Mrs. Cliff was surprised. She had no idea it was so late, but she went
back to Mr. Burke and urged him to stay to dinner. He consented
instantly, declaring that this was the first time that anybody, not his
mother, had asked him to dinner since he came into his fortune.
When Mrs. Cliff had excused herself to give some directions about the
meal, Burke walked about the parlor, carefully examining everything in
it. When he had finished his survey, he sat down and shook his head.
"The trouble with her is," he said to himself, "that she's so dreadfully
afraid of running ashore that she will never reach any port, that's
what's the matter!"
When Mrs. Cliff returned, she asked her visitor if he would like to see
her house, and she showed him over it with great satisfaction, for she
had filled every room with all the handsome and appropriate things she
could get into it. Burke noticed everything, and spoke with approbation
of many things, but as he walked behind his hostess, he kept shaking his
head.
He went down to dinner, and was introduced to Willy Croup, who had been
ordered to go and dress herself that she might appear at the meal. He
shook hands with her very cordially, and then looked all around the
little dining-room, taking in every feature of its furnishing and
adornment. When he had finished, he would have been glad to shake his
head again, but this would have been observed.
When the dinner came on, however, Mr. Burke had no desire to shake his
head. It was what might have been called a family dinner, but there was
such a variety, such an abundance, everything was so admirably cooked,
and the elderberry wine, which was produced in his honor, was so much
more rich and fragrant to his taste than the wines he had had at hotels,
that Mr. Burke was delighted.
Now he felt that in forming an opinion as to Mrs. Cliff's manner of
living he had some grounds to stand upon. "What she wants," thought he,
"is all the solid, sensible comfort her money can give her, and where
she knows what she wants, she gets it; but the trouble seems to be that
in most things she doesn't know what she wants!"
When Mr. Burke that afternoon walked back to the hotel, wrapped in his
fur-trimmed coat and carefully puffing a fine Havana cigar, he had
entirely forgotten his own plans and purposes in life, and was engrossed
in those of Mrs. Cliff.
CHAPTER VII
MR. BURKE ACCEPTS A RESPONSIBILITY
Willy Croup was very much pleased with Mr. Burke, and she was glad that
she had allowed herself to be persuaded to sit at table with such a fine
gentleman.
He treated her with extreme graciousness of manner, and it was quite
plain to her that if he recognized her in her silk gown as the person
who, in a calico dress, had opened the front door for him, he had
determined to make her feel that he had not noticed the coincidence.
He was a good deal younger than she was, but Willy's childlike
disposition had projected itself into her maturer years, and in some
respects there was a greater sympathy, quickly perceived by both,
between her and Mr. Burke than yet existed between him and Mrs. Cliff.
After some of the amusing anecdotes which he told, the visitor looked
first towards Willy to see how she appreciated them; but it must not be
supposed that he was not extremely attentive and deferential to his
hostess.
If Willy had known what a brave, gallant, and daring sailor he was, she
would have made a hero of him; but Mrs. Cliff had never said much about
Burke, and Willy simply admired him as the best specimen of the urbane
man of the world with whom she had yet met.
The two women talked a good deal about their visitor that evening, and
Mrs. Cliff said that she hoped he was not going to leave town very soon,
for it was possible that she might be of help to him if he wanted to
settle down in that part of the country.
The next morning, soon after breakfast, when Willy opened the front gate
of the yard and stepped out upon the street with a small covered basket
in her hand, she had gone but a very little distance when she met Mr.
Burke, with his furs, his cane, and his silk hat. The latter was lifted
very high as its owner saluted Miss Croup.
Willy, who was of a fair complexion, reddened somewhat as she shook
hands with the gentleman, informed him, in answer to his questions, that
Mrs. Cliff was very well, that she was very well; that the former was at
home and would be glad to see him, and that she herself was going into
the business part of the town to make some little purchases.
She would have been better pleased if she had not been obliged to tell
him where she was going, but she could not do otherwise when he said he
supposed she was walking for the benefit of the fresh morning air. He
added to her discomfiture by requesting to be allowed to walk with her,
and by offering to carry her basket. This threw Willy's mind into a good
deal of a flutter. Why could she not have met this handsomely dressed
gentleman sometime when she was not going to the grocery store to buy
such things as stove-blacking and borax?
It seemed to her as if these commodities must suggest to the mind of any
one rusty iron and obtrusive insects, and as articles altogether outside
the pale of allusion in high-toned social intercourse.
It also struck her as a little odd that a gentleman should propose to
accompany a lady when she was going on domestic errands; but then this
gentleman was different from any she had known, and there were many ways
of the world with which she was not at all acquainted.
Mr. Burke immediately began to speak of the visit of the day before. He
had enjoyed seeing Mrs. Cliff again and he had never sat down to a
better dinner.
"Yes," said Willy, "she likes good eatin', and she knows what it is, and
if she had a bigger dining-room she would often invite people to dinner,
and I expect the house would be quite lively, as she seems more given to
company than she used to be, and that's all right, considerin' she's
better able to afford it."
Mr. Burke took a deep satisfied breath. The opportunity had already come
to him to speak his mind.
"Afford it!" said he. "I should think so! Mrs. Cliff must be very rich.
She is worth, I should say--well, I don't know what to say, not knowing
exactly and precisely what each person got when the grand division was
made."
Willy's loyalty to Mrs. Cliff prompted her to put her in as good a light
as possible before this man of the world, and her own self-esteem
prompted her to show that, being a friend and relative of this rich
lady, she was not ignorant of her affairs in life.
"Oh, she's rich!" said Willy. "I can't say, of course, just how much she
has, but I'm quite sure that she owns at least--"
Willy wished to put the amount of the fortune at one hundred thousand
dollars, but she was a little afraid that this might be too much, and
yet she did not wish to make the amount any smaller than could possibly
be helped. So she thought of seventy-five, and then eighty, and finally
remarked that Mrs. Cliff must be worth at least ninety thousand dollars.
Mr. Burke looked up at the sky and wanted to whistle.
"Ninety thousand dollars!" he said to himself. "I know positively that
it was at least four millions at the time of the division, and she says
she's richer now than she was then, which is easy to be accounted for by
the interest coming in. I see her game! She wants to keep shady about
her big fortune because her neighbors would expect her to live up to it,
and she knows it isn't in her to live up to it. Now, I'm beginning to
see through the fog." "It seems to me," said he, "that Mrs. Cliff ought
to have a bigger dining-room."
This remark pulled up the flood-gate to Willy's accumulated sentiments
on the subject, and they poured forth in a rushing stream.
Yes, indeed, Mrs. Cliff ought to have a bigger dining-room, and other
rooms to the house, and there was the front fence, and no end of things
she ought to have, and it was soon made clear to Mr. Burke that Willy
had been lying awake at night thinking, and thinking, and thinking about
what Mrs. Cliff ought to have and what she did not have. She said she
really and honestly believed that there was no reason at all why she did
not have them, except that she did not want to seem to be setting
herself up above her neighbors. In fact, Mrs. Cliff had told Willy two
or three times, when there had been a discussion about prices, that she
was able to do anything she wanted, and if she could do that, why did
she not do it? People were all talking about it, and they had talked and
talked her fortune down until in some families it was not any more than
ten thousand dollars.
On and on talked Willy, while Mr. Burke said scarcely a word, but he
listened with the greatest attention. They had now walked on until they
had reached the main street of the little town, gone through the
business part where the shops were, and out into the suburbs. Suddenly
Willy stopped.
"Oh dear!" she exclaimed, "I've gone too far! I was so interested in
talking, that I didn't think."
"I'm sorry," said Mr. Burke, "that I've taken you out of your way. Can't
I get you what you want and save you the trouble?"
Now Willy was in another flutter. After the walk with the fur-trimmed
coat, and the talk about dollars by thousands and tens of thousands, she
could not come down to mention borax and blacking.
"Oh no, thank you!" said she, trying her best to think of some other
errand than the one she had come upon. "I don't believe it's finished
yet, and it's hardly worth while to stop. There was one of those big
cushion covers that she brought from Paris, that was to be filled with
down, but I don't believe it's ready yet, and I needn't stop."
Mr. Burke could not but think it a little odd that such a small basket
should be brought for the purpose of carrying home a large down cushion,
but he said nothing further on the subject. He had had a most gratifying
conversation with this communicative and agreeable person, and his
interest in Mrs. Cliff was greatly increased.
When he neared the hotel, he took leave of his companion, saying that he
would call in the afternoon; and Willy, after she had looked back and
was sure he was out of sight, slipped into the grocery store and got her
borax and blacking.
Mr. Burke called on Mrs. Cliff that afternoon, and the next morning, and
two or three times the day after. They came to be very much interested
in each other, and Burke in his mind compared this elderly friend with
his mother, and not to the advantage of the latter. Burke's mother was a
woman who would always have her own way, and wanted advice and counsel
from no one, but Mrs. Cliff was a very different woman.
She was so willing to listen to what Burke said--and his remarks were
nearly always on the subject of the proper expenditure of money--and
appeared to attach so much importance to his opinions, that he began to
feel that a certain responsibility, not at all an unpleasant one, was
forcing itself upon him.
He did not think that he should try to constitute himself her director,
or even to assume the position of professional suggester, but in an
amateur way he suggested, and she, without any idea of depending upon
him for suggestions, found herself more and more inclined to accept them
as he continued to offer them.
She soon discovered that he was the only person in Plainton who knew her
real fortune, and this was a bond of sympathy and union between them,
and she became aware that she had succeeded in impressing him with her
desire to live upon her fortune in such a manner that it would not
interfere with her friendships or associations, and her lifelong ideas
of comfort and pleasure.
The people of the town talked a great deal about the fine gentleman at
the hotel, but they knew he was one of the people who had become rich in
consequence of Captain Horn's discovery; and some of them, good friends
of Mrs. Cliff, felt sorry that she had not profited to as great a degree
by that division as this gentleman of opulent taste, who occupied two of
the best rooms in the hotel, and obliged Mr. Williams to send to
Harrington, and even to Boston, for provisions suitable to his epicurean
tastes, and who drove around the country with a carriage and pair at
least once a day.
When Burke was ready to make his suggestions, he thought he would begin
in a mild fashion, and see how Mrs. Cliff would take them.
"If I was in your place, madam," said he, "the first thing I would do
would be to have a lot of servants. There's nothin' money can give a
person that's better than plenty of people to do things. Lots of them on
hand all the time, like the crew of a ship."
"But I couldn't do that, Mr. Burke," said she; "my house is too small. I
haven't any place for servants to sleep. When I enlarge my house, of
course, I may have more servants."
"Oh, I wouldn't wait for that," said he; "until then you could board
them at the hotel."
This suggestion was strongly backed by Willy Croup, and Mrs. Cliff took
the matter to heart. She collected together a domestic establishment of
as many servants as she thought her establishment could possibly provide
with work, and, although she did not send them to be guests at the
hotel, she obtained lodging for them at the house of a poor woman in the
neighborhood.
When she had done this, she felt that she had made a step in the
direction of doing her duty by her money.
Mr. Burke made another suggestion. "If I was you," said he, "I wouldn't
wait for times or seasons, for in these days people build in winter the
same as in summer. I would put up that addition just as soon as it could
be done."
Mrs. Cliff sighed. "I suppose that's what I should do," said she. "I
feel that it is, but you know how I hate to begin it."
"But you needn't hate it," said he. "There isn't the least reason in the
world for any objection to it. I've a plan which will make it all clear
sailin'. I've been thinkin' it out, and this is the way I've thought
it." Mrs. Cliff listened with great attention.
"Now then," said Burke, "next to you on the west is your own lot that
you're going to put your new dining-room on. Am I right there?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Cliff, "you are right there."
"Well, next to that is the little house inhabited by a family named
Barnard, I'm told, and next to that there's a large corner lot with an
old house on it that's for sale. Now then, if I was you, I'd buy that
corner lot and clear away the old house, and I'd build my dining-room
right there. I'd get a good architect and let him plan you a
first-class, A number one, dining-room, with other rooms to it, above it
and below it, and around it; with porticos, and piazzas, and little
balconies to the second story, and everything that anybody might want
attached to a first-class dining-room."
Mrs. Cliff laughed. "But what good would it be to me away up there at
the corner of the next street?"
"The reason for putting it there," said Burke, "is to get clear of all
the noise and dirt of building, and the fuss and bother that you dislike
so much. And then when it was all finished, and painted, and papered,
and the carpets down, if you like, I'd have it moved right up here
against your house just where you want it. When everything was in order,
and you was ready, you could cut a door right through into the new
dining-room, and there you'd be. They've got so in the way of slidin'
buildings along on timbers now that they can travel about almost like
the old stage coaches, and you needn't have your cellar dug until you're
ready to clap your new dining-room right over it."
Mrs. Cliff smiled, and Willy listened with open eyes. "But how about the
Barnard family and their house?" said she.
"Oh, I'd buy them a lot somewhere else," said he, "and move their house.
They wouldn't object if you paid them extra. What I'd have if I was in
your place, Mrs. Cliff, would be a clear lot down to the next street,
and I'd have a garden in it with flowers, and gravel walks, and
greenhouses, and all that sort of thing."
"All stretching itself out in the sunshine under the new dining-room
windows!" cried Willy Croup, with sparkling eyes.
Mrs. Cliff sat and considered, a cheerful glow in her veins. Here,
really, was an opportunity of stemming the current of her income without
shocking any of her social instincts!
CHAPTER VIII
MR. BURKE BEGINS TO MAKE THINGS MOVE IN PLAINTON
It was not long before Mr. Burke began to be a very important personage
in Plainton. It was generally known that he intended to buy land and
settle in the neighborhood, and as he was a rich man, evidently
inclined to be liberal in his expenditures, this was a matter of great
interest both in social and business circles.
He often drove out to survey the surrounding country, but when he was
perceived several times standing in front of an old house at the corner
of the street near Mrs. Cliff's residence, it was supposed that he might
have changed his mind in regard to a country place, and was thinking of
building in the town.
He was not long considered a stranger in the place. Mrs. Cliff
frequently spoke of him as a valued friend, and there was reason to
believe that in the various adventures and dangers of which they had
heard, Mr. Burke had been of great service to their old friend and
neighbor, and it was not unlikely that his influence had had a good deal
to do with her receipt of a portion of the treasure discovered by the
commander of the expedition.
Several persons had said more than once that they could not see why Mrs.
Cliff should have had any claim upon this treasure, except, perhaps, to
the extent of her losses. But if she had had a friend in camp,--and Mr.
Burke was certainly a friend,--it was easy to understand why he would do
the best he could, at a time when money was so plenty, for the benefit
of one whom he knew to be a widow in straitened circumstances.
So Mr. Burke was looked upon not only as a man of wealth and superior
tastes in regard to food and personal comfort, but as a man of a liberal
and generous disposition. Furthermore, there was no pride about him.
Often on his return from his drives, his barouche and pair, which Mr.
Williams had obtained in Harrington for his guest's express benefit,
would stop in front of Mrs. Cliff's modest residence; and two or three
times he had taken that good lady and Willy Croup to drive with him.
But Mrs. Cliff did not care very much for the barouche. She would have
preferred a little phaëton and a horse which she could drive herself. As
for her horse and the two-seated wagon, that was declared by most of the
ladies of the town to be a piece of absolute extravagance. It was used
almost exclusively by Willy, who was known to deal with shops in the
most distant part of the town in order that she might have an excuse, it
was said, to order out that wagon and have Andrew Marks to drive her.
Of course they did not know how often Mrs. Cliff had said to herself
that it was really not a waste of money to keep this horse, for Willy
was no longer young; and if she could save her any weary steps, she
ought to do it, and at the same time relieve a little the congested
state of her income.
Moreover, Mr. Burke was not of an unknown family. He was quite willing
to talk about himself, especially to Mr. Williams, as they sat and
smoked together in the evening, and he said a good deal about his
father, who had owned two ships at Nantucket, and who, according to his
son, was one of the most influential citizens of the place.
Mr. Williams had heard of the Burkes of Nantucket, and he did not think
any the less of the one who was now his guest, because his father's
ships had come to grief during his boyhood, and he had been obliged to
give up a career on shore, which he would have liked, and go to sea,
which he did not like. A brave spirit in poverty coupled with a liberal
disposition in opulence was enough to place Mr. Burke on a very high
plane in the opinions of the people of Plainton.
Half a mile outside the town, upon a commanding eminence, there was a
handsome house which belonged to a family named Buskirk. These people
were really not of Plainton, although their post-office and railroad
station were there. They were rich city people who came to this country
place for the summer and autumn, and who had nothing to do with the town
folks, except in a limited degree to deal with some of them.
This family lived in great style, and their coachman and footman in knee
breeches, their handsome horses with docked tails, the beautiful grounds
about their house, a feebly shooting fountain on the front lawn, were a
source of anxious disquietude in the mind of Mrs. Cliff. They were like
the skeletons which were brought in at the feasts of the ancients.
"If I should ever be obliged to live like the Buskirks on the hill," the
good lady would say to herself, "I would wish myself back to what I used
to be, asking only that my debts be paid."
Even the Buskirks took notice of Mr. Burke. In him they thought it
possible they might have a neighbor. If he should buy a place and build
a fine house somewhere in their vicinity, which they thought the only
vicinity in which any one should build a fine house, it might be a very
good thing, and would certainly not depreciate the value of their
property. A wealthy bachelor might indeed be a more desirable neighbor
than a large family.
The Buskirks had been called upon when they came to Plainton a few years
before by several families. Of course, the clergyman, Mr. Perley, and
his wife, paid them a visit, and the two Misses Thorpedyke hired a
carriage and drove to the house, and, although they did not see the
family, they left their cards.
After some time these and other calls were returned, but in the most
ceremonious manner, and there ended the social intercourse between the
fine house on the hill and the town.
As the Buskirks drove to Harrington to church, they did not care about
the Perleys, and although they seemed somewhat inclined to cultivate the
Thorpedykes, who were known to be of such an excellent old family, the
Thorpedykes did not reciprocate the feeling, and, having declined an
invitation to tea, received no more.
But now Mr. Buskirk, who had come up on Saturday to spend Sunday with
his family, actually called on Mr. Burke at the hotel. The wealthy
sailor was not at home, and the city gentleman left his card.
When Mr. Burke showed this card to Mrs. Cliff, her face clouded. "Are
you going to return the visit?" said she.
"Oh yes!" answered Burke. "Some of these days I will drive up and look
in on them. I expect they have got a fancy parlor, and I would like to
sit in it a while and think of the days when I used to swab the deck.
There's nothin' more elevatin', to my mind, than just that sort of
thing. I do it sometime when I am eatin' my meals at the hotel, and the
better I can bring to mind the bad coffee and hard tack, the better I
like what's set before me."
Mrs. Cliff sighed. She wished Mr. Buskirk had kept away from the hotel.
As soon as Mrs. Cliff had consented to the erection of the new
dining-room on the corner lot,--and she did not hesitate after Mr. Burke
had explained to her how easy it would be to do the whole thing almost
without her knowing anything about it, if she did not want to bother
herself in the matter,--the enterprise was begun.
Burke, who was of an active mind, and who delighted in managing and
directing, undertook to arrange everything. There was no agreement
between Mrs. Cliff and himself that he should do this, but it pleased
him so much to do it, and it pleased her so much to have him do it, that
it was done as a thing which might be expected to happen naturally.
Sometimes she said he was giving her too much of his time, but he
scorned such an idea. He had nothing to do, for he did not believe that
he should buy a place for himself until spring, because he wanted to
pick out a spot to live in when the leaves were coming out instead of
when they were dropping off, and the best fun he knew of would be to
have command of a big crew, and to keep them at work building Mrs.
Cliff's dining-room.
"I should be glad to have you attend to the contracts," said Mrs. Cliff,
"and all I ask is, that while you don't waste anything,--for I think it
is a sin to waste money no matter how much you may have,--that you will
help me as much as you can to make me feel that I really am making use
of my income."
Burke agreed to do all this, always under her advice, of course, and
very soon he had his crew, and they were hard at work. He sent to
Harrington and employed an architect to make plans, and as soon as the
general basis of these was agreed upon, the building was put in charge
of a contractor, who, under Mr. Burke, began to collect material and
workmen from all available quarters.
"We've got to work sharp, for the new building must be moored alongside
Mrs. Cliff's house before the first snowstorm."
A lawyer of Plainton undertook the purchase of the land and, as the
payments were to be made in cash, and as there was no chaffering about
prices, this business was soon concluded.
As to the Barnard family, Mr. Burke himself undertook negotiations with
them. When he had told them of the handsome lot on another street, which
would be given them in exchange, and how he would gently slide their
house to the new location, and put it down on any part of the lot which
they might choose, and guaranteed that it should be moved so gently that
the clocks would not stop ticking, nor the tea or coffee spill out of
their cups, if they chose to take their meals on board during the
voyage; and as, furthermore, he promised a handsome sum to recompense
them for the necessity of leaving behind their well, which he could not
undertake to move, and for any minor inconveniences and losses, their
consent to the change of location was soon obtained.
Four days after this Burke started the Barnard house on its travels. As
soon as he had made his agreement with the family, he had brought a man
down from Harrington, whose business it was to move houses, and had put
the job into his hands. He stipulated that at one o'clock P.M. on the
day agreed upon the house was to begin to move, and he arranged with the
mason to whom he had given the contract for preparing the cellar on the
new lot, that he should begin operations at the same hour.
He then offered a reward of two hundred dollars to be given to the mover
if he got his house to its destination before the cellar was done, or to
the mason if he finished the cellar before the house arrived.
The Barnards had an early dinner, which was cooked on a kerosene stove,
their chimney having been taken down, but they had not finished washing
the dishes when their house began to move.
Mrs. Cliff and Willy ran to bid them good-bye, and all the Barnards, old
and young, leaned out of a back window and shook hands.
Mr. Burke had arranged a sort of gang-plank with a railing if any of
them wanted to go on shore--that is, step on terra firma--during the
voyage. But Samuel Rolands, the mover, heedful of his special prize,
urged upon them not to get out any oftener than could be helped, because
when they wished to use the gang-plank he would be obliged to stop.
There were two boys in the family who were able to jump off and on
whenever they pleased, but boys are boys, and very different from other
people.
Houses had been moved in Plainton before, but never had any inhabitants
of the place beheld a building glide along upon its timber course with,
speaking comparatively, the rapidity of this travelling home.
Most of the citizens of the place who had leisure, came at some time
that afternoon to look at the moving house, and many of them walked by
its side, talking to the Barnards, who, as the sun was warm, stood at an
open window, very much excited by the spirit of adventure, and quite
willing to converse.
Over and over they assured their neighbors that they would never know
they were moving if they did not see the trees and things slowly passing
by them.
As they crossed the street and passed between two houses on the opposite
side, the inhabitants of these gathered at their windows, and the
conversation was very lively with the Barnards, as the house of the
latter passed slowly by.
All night that house moved on, and the young people of the village
accompanied it until eleven o'clock, when the Barnards went to bed.
Mr. Burke divided his time between watching the moving house, at which
all the men who could be employed in any way, and all the horses which
could be conveniently attached to the windlasses, were working in
watches of four hours each, in order to keep them fresh and
vigorous,--and the lot where the new cellar was being constructed,
where the masons continued their labors at night by the light of
lanterns and a blazing bonfire fed with resinous pine.
The excitement caused by these two scenes of activity was such that it
is probable that few of the people of the town went to bed sooner than
the Barnard family.
Early the next morning the two Barnard boys looked out of the window of
their bedroom and saw beneath them the Hastings' barnyard, with the
Hastings boy milking. They were so excited by this vision that they
threw their shoes and stockings out at him, having no other missiles
convenient, and for nearly half an hour he followed that house, trying
to toss the articles back through the open window, while the cow stood
waiting for the milking to be finished.
On the evening of the third day after its departure from its original
position, the Barnard house arrived on the new lot, and, to the disgust
of Samuel Rolands, he found the cellar entirely finished and ready for
him to place the house upon it. But Mr. Burke, who had been quite sure
that this would be the result of the competition, comforted him by
telling him that as he had done his best, he too should have a prize
equal to that given to the mason. This had been suggested by Mrs. Cliff,
because, she said, that as they were both hard-working men with
families, and although the house-mover was not a citizen of Plainton, he
had once lived there, she was very glad of this opportunity of helping
them along.
As soon as this important undertaking had been finished, Mr. Burke was
able to give his sole attention to the new dining-room on the corner
lot. He and the architect had worked hard upon the plans, and when they
were finished they had been shown to Mrs. Cliff. She understood them in
a general way, and was very glad to see that such ample provisions had
been made in regard to closets, though she was not able to perceive with
her mind's eye the exact dimensions of a room nineteen by twenty-seven,
nor to appreciate the difference between a ceiling twelve feet high, and
another which was nine.
However, having told Mr. Burke and the architect what she wanted, and
both of them having told her what she ought to have, she determined to
leave the whole matter in their hands. This resolution was greatly
approved by her sailor friend, for, as the object of the plan of
construction was to relieve her of all annoyance consequent upon
building operations, the more she left everything to those who delighted
in the turmoil of construction, the better it would be for all.
Everything had been done in the plans to prevent interference with the
neatness and comfort of Mrs. Cliff's present abode. The door of the new
dining-room was so arranged that when it was moved up to the old house,
it would exactly fit against a door in the latter which opened from a
side hall upon a little porch. This porch being removed, the two doors
would fit exactly to each other, and there would be none of the dust and
noise consequent upon the cutting away of walls.
So Mrs. Cliff and Willy lived on in peace, comfort, and quiet in their
old home, while on the corner lot there was hammering, and banging, and
sawing all day. Mr. Burke would have had this work go on by night, but
the contractor refused. His men would work extra hours in consideration
of extra inducements, but good carpenter work, he declared, could not be
done by lantern light.
The people of Plainton did not at all understand the operations on the
corner lot. Mr. Burke did not tell them much about it, and the
contractor was not willing to talk. He had some doubts in regard to the
scheme, but as he was well paid, he would do his best. It had been
mentioned that the new building was to be Mrs. Cliff's dining-room, but
this idea soon faded out of the Plainton mind, which was not adapted to
grasp and hold it.
Consequently, as Mr. Burke had a great deal to do with the building, and
as Mrs. Cliff did not appear to be concerned in it at all, it was
generally believed that the gentleman at the hotel was putting up a
house for himself on the corner lot. This knowledge was the only
conclusion which would explain the fact that the house was built upon
smooth horizontal timbers, and not upon a stone or brick foundation. A
man who had been a sailor might fancy to build a house something as he
would build a ship in a shipyard, and not attach it permanently to the
earth.
CHAPTER IX
A MEETING OF HEIRS
While the building operations were going on at such a rapid rate on the
corner lot, Mrs. Cliff tried to make herself as happy as possible in her
own home. She liked having enough servants to do all the work, and
relieve both her and Willy. She liked to be able to drive out when she
wanted to, or to invite a few of her friends to dinner or to tea, and to
give them the very best the markets afforded of everything she thought
they might like; but she was not a satisfied woman.
It was true that Mr. Burke was doing all that he could with her money,
and doing it well, she had not the slightest doubt; but, after all, a
new dining-room was a matter of small importance. She had fears that
even after it was all finished and paid for she would find that her
income had gained upon her.
As often as once a day the argument came to her that it would be wise
for her to give away the bulk of her fortune in charity, and thus rid
herself of the necessity for this depressing struggle between her desire
to live as she wanted to live, and the obligations to herself under
which her fortune placed her; but she could not consent to thus part
with her great fortune. She would not turn her back upon her golden
opportunities. As soon as she had so determined her life that the
assertion of her riches would not interfere with her domestic and
social affairs, she would be charitable enough, she would do good works
upon a large scale; but she must first determine what she was to do for
herself, and so let her charities begin at home.
This undecided state of mind did not have a good effect upon her general
appearance, and it was frequently remarked that her health was not what
it used to be. Miss Nancy Shott thought there was nothing to wonder at
in this. Mrs. Cliff had never been accustomed to spend money, and it was
easy to see, from the things she had bought abroad and put into that
little house, that she had expended a good deal more than she could
afford, and no wonder she was troubled, and no wonder she was looking
thin and sick.
Other friends, however, did not entirely agree with Miss Shott. They
thought their old friend was entirely too sensible a woman to waste a
fortune, whether it had been large or small, which had come to her in so
wonderful a manner; and they believed she had money enough to live on
very comfortably. If this were not the case, she would never consent to
keep a carriage almost for Willy Croup's sole use.
They thought, perhaps, that the example and companionship of Mr. Burke
might have had an effect upon her. It was as likely as not that she had
borne part of the expense of moving the Barnard house, so that there
should be nothing between her and the new building. But this, as they
said themselves, was mere surmise. Mr. Burke might fancy large grounds,
and he was certainly able to have them if he wanted them. Whatever
people said and thought about Mrs. Cliff and her money, it was generally
believed that she was in comfortable circumstances. Still, it had to be
admitted that she was getting on in years.
Now arose a very important question among the gossips of Plainton: who
was to be Mrs. Cliff's heir?
Everybody knew that Mrs. Cliff had but one blood relation living, and
that was Willy Croup, and no one who had given any thought whatever to
the subject believed that Willy Croup would be her heir. Her husband had
some distant relatives, but, as they had had nothing to do with Mrs.
Cliff during the days of her adversity, it was not likely that she would
now have anything to do with them. Especially, as any money she had to
leave did not come through her husband.
But, although the simple-minded Willy Croup was a person who would not
know how to take care of money if she had it, and although everybody
knew that if Mrs. Cliff made a will she would never think of leaving her
property to Willy, still, everybody who thought or talked about the
matter saw the appalling fact staring them in their faces--that if Mrs.
Cliff died without a will, Willy would inherit her possessions!
The more it was considered, the more did this unpleasant contingency
trouble the minds of certain of the female citizens of Plainton. Miss
Cushing, the principal dressmaker of the place, was greatly concerned
upon this subject, and as her parlor, where she generally sat at her
work, was a favorite resort of certain ladies, who sometimes had orders
to give, and always had a great deal to say, it was natural that those
good women who took most to heart Mrs. Cliff's heirless condition should
think of Miss Cushing whenever they were inclined to talk upon the
subject.
Miss Shott dropped in there one day with a very doleful countenance.
That very morning she had passed Mrs. Cliff's house on the other side of
the way, and had seen that poor widow standing in her front yard with
the most dejected and miserable countenance she had ever seen on a human
being.
"People might talk as much as they pleased about Mrs. Cliff being
troubled because she had spent too much money, that all might be, or it
might not be, but it was not the reason for that woman looking as if she
was just ready to drop into a sick-bed. When people go to the most
unhealthy regions in the whole world, and live in holes in the ground
like hedgehogs, they cannot expect to come home without seeds of disease
in their system, which are bound to come out. And that those seeds were
now coming out in Mrs. Cliff no sensible person could look at her and
deny."
When Miss Cushing heard this, she felt more strongly convinced than ever
of the importance of the subject upon which she and some of her friends
had been talking. But she said nothing in regard to that subject to Miss
Shott. What she had to say and what she had already said about the
future of Mrs. Cliff's property, and what her particular friends had
said, were matters which none of them wanted repeated, and when a
citizen of Plainton did not wish anything repeated, it was not told to
Miss Shott.
But after Miss Shott had gone, there came in Mrs. Ferguson, a widow
lady, and shortly afterwards, Miss Inchman, a middle-aged spinster,
accompanied by Mrs. Wells and Mrs. Archibald, these latter both worthy
matrons of the town. Mrs. Archibald really came to talk to Miss Cushing
about a winter dress, but during the subsequent conversation she made no
reference to this errand.
Miss Cushing was relating to Mrs. Ferguson what Nancy had told her when
the other ladies came in, but Nancy Shott had stopped in at each of
their houses and had already given them the information.
"Nancy always makes out things a good deal worse than they are," said
Mrs. Archibald, "but there's truth in what she says. Mrs. Cliff is
failing; everybody can see that!"
"Of course they can," said Miss Cushing, "and I say that if she has any
friends in Plainton,--and everybody knows she has,--it's time for them
to do something!"
"The trouble is, what to do, and who is to do it," remarked Mrs.
Ferguson.
"What to do is easy enough," said Miss Cushing, "but who is to do it is
another matter."
"And what would you do?" asked Mrs. Wells. "If she feels she needs a
doctor, she has sense enough to send for one without waiting until her
friends speak about it."
"The doctor is a different thing altogether!" said Miss Cushing. "If he
comes and cures her, that's neither here nor there. It isn't the point!
But the danger is, that, whether he comes or not, she is a woman well on
in years, with a constitution breaking down under her,--that is as far
as appearances go, for of course I can't say anything positive about
it,--and she has nobody to inherit her money, and as far as anybody
knows she has never made a will!"
"Oh, she has never made a will," said Mrs. Wells, "because my John is in
the office, and if Mrs. Cliff had ever come there on such business, he
would know about it."
"But she ought to make a will," said Miss Cushing. "That's the long and
short of it; and she ought to have a friend who would tell her so. That
would be no more than a Christian duty which any one of us would owe to
another, if cases were changed."
"I don't look upon Mrs. Cliff as such a very old woman," said Miss
Inchman, "but I agree with you that this thing ought to be put before
her. Willy Croup will never do it, and really if some one of us don't, I
don't know who will."
"There's Mrs. Perley," said Mrs. Archibald.
"Oh, she'd never do!" struck in Miss Cushing. "Mrs. Perley is too timid.
She would throw it off on her husband, and if he talks to Mrs. Cliff
about a will, her money will all go to the church or to some charity. I
should say that one of us ought to take on herself this friendly duty.
Of course, it would not do to go to her and blurt out that we all
thought she would not live very long, and that she ought to make her
will; but conversation could be led to the matter, and when Mrs. Cliff
got to consider her own case, I haven't a doubt but that she would be
glad to have advice and help from an old friend."
All agreed that this was a very correct view of the case, but not one of
them volunteered to go and talk to Mrs. Cliff on the subject. This was
not from timidity, nor from an unwillingness to meddle in other people's
business, but from a desire on the part of each not to injure herself in
Mrs. Cliff's eyes by any action which might indicate that she had a
personal interest in the matter.
Miss Cushing voiced the opinion of the company when she said: "When a
person has no heirs, relatives ought to be considered first, but if
there are none of these, or if they aren't suitable, then friends should
come in. Of course, I mean the oldest and best friends of the party
without heirs."
No remark immediately followed this, for each lady was thinking that
she, probably more than any one else in Plainton, had a claim upon Mrs.
Cliff's attention if she were leaving her property to her friends, as
she certainly ought to do.
In years gone by Mrs. Cliff had been a very kind friend to Miss Cushing.
She had loaned her money, and assisted her in various ways, and since
her return to Plainton she had put a great deal of work into Miss
Cushing's hands. Dress after dress for Willy Croup had been made, and
material for others was still lying in the house; and Mrs. Cliff herself
had ordered so much work, that at this moment Miss Cushing had two girls
upstairs sewing diligently upon it.
Having experienced all this kindness, Miss Cushing felt that if Mrs.
Cliff left any of her money to her friends, she would certainly remember
her, and that right handsomely. If anybody spoke to Mrs. Cliff upon the
subject, she would insist, and she thought she had a right to insist,
that her name should be brought in prominently.
Mrs. Ferguson had also well-defined opinions upon the subject. She had
two daughters who were more than half grown, had learned all that they
could be taught in Plainton, and she was very anxious to send them away
to school, where their natural talents could be properly cultivated. She
felt that she owed a deep and solemn duty to these girls, and she had
already talked to Mrs. Cliff about them.
The latter had taken a great deal of interest in the matter, and
although she had not said she would help Mrs. Ferguson to properly
educate these girls, for she had not asked her help, she had taken so
much interest in the matter that their mother had great hopes. And if
this widow without any children felt inclined to assist the children of
others during her life, how much more willing would she be likely to be
to appropriate a portion of what she left behind her to such an object!
Mrs. Wells and Mrs. Archibald had solid claims upon Mrs. Cliff. It was
known that shortly after the death of her husband, when she found it
difficult to make collections and was very much in need of money for
immediate expenses, they had each made loans to her. It is true that
even before she started for South America she had repaid these loans
with full legal interest. But the two matrons could not forget that they
had been kind to her, nor did they believe that Mrs. Cliff had forgotten
what they had done, for the presents she had brought them from France
were generally considered as being more beautiful and more valuable than
those given to anybody else,--except the Thorpedykes and the Perleys.
This indicated a very gratifying gratitude upon which the two ladies,
each for herself, had every right to build very favorable hopes.
Miss Inchman and Mrs. Cliff had been school-fellows, and when they were
both grown young women there had been a good deal of doubt which one of
them William Cliff would marry. He made his choice, and Susan Inchman
never showed by word or deed that she begrudged him to her friend, to
whom she had always endeavored to show just as much kindly feeling as if
there had been two William Cliffs, and each of the young women had
secured one of them. If Mrs. Cliff, now a widow with money enough to
live well upon and keep a carriage, was making out her will, and was
thinking of her friends in Plainton, it would be impossible for her to
forget one who was the oldest friend of all.
So it is easy to see why she did not want to go to Mrs. Cliff and
prejudice her against herself, by stating that she ought to make a will
for the benefit of the old friends who had always loved and respected
her.
Miss Cushing now spoke. She knew what each member of the little company
was thinking about, and she felt that it might as well be spoken of.
"It does seem to me," said she, "and I never would have thought of it,
if it hadn't been for the talk we had,--that we five are the persons
that Mrs. Cliff would naturally mention in her will, not, perhaps,
regarding any money she might have to leave--"
"I don't see why!" interrupted Mrs. Ferguson.
"Well, that's neither here nor there," continued Miss Cushing. "Money is
money, and nobody knows what people will do with it when they die, and
if she leaves anything to the church or to charity, it's her money! but
I'm sure that Mrs. Cliff has too much hard sense to order her executors
to sell all the beautiful rugs, and table-covers, and glass, and china,
and the dear knows what besides is in her house at this moment! They
wouldn't bring anything at a sale, and she would naturally think of
leaving them to her friends. Some might get more and some might get
less, but we five in this room at this present moment are the old
friends that Mrs. Cliff would naturally remember. And if any one of us
ever sees fit to speak to her on the subject, we're the people who
should be mentioned when the proper opportunity comes to make such
mention."
"You're forgetting Willy Croup," said Mrs. Wells.
"No," answered Miss Cushing, a little sharply, "I don't forget her, but
I'll have nothing to do with her. I don't suppose she'll be forgotten,
but whatever is done for her or whatever is not done for her is not our
business. It's my private opinion, however, that she's had a good deal
already!"
"Well," said Mrs. Ferguson, "I suppose that what you say is all
right,--at least I've no objections to any of it; but whoever's going to
speak to her, it mustn't be me, because she knows I've daughters to
educate, and she'd naturally think that if I spoke I was principally
speaking for myself, and that would set her against me, which I wouldn't
do for the world. And whatever other people may say, I believe she will
have money to leave."
Miss Cushing hesitated for a moment, and then spoke up boldly.
"It's my opinion," said she, "that Miss Inchman is the proper person to
speak to Mrs. Cliff on this important subject. She's known her all her
life, from the time when they were little girls together, and when they
were both grown she made sacrifices for her which none of the rest of us
had the chance to make.
"Now, for Miss Inchman to go and open the subject in a gradual and
friendly way would be the right and proper thing, no matter how you look
at it, and it's my opinion that we who are now here should ask her to go
and speak, not in our names perhaps, but out of good-will and kindness
to us as well as to Mrs. Cliff."
Mrs. Wells was a lady who was in the habit of saying things at the wrong
time, and she now remarked, "We've forgotten the Thorpedykes! You know,
Mrs. Cliff--"
Miss Cushing leaned forward, her face reddened. "Bother the
Thorpedykes!" she exclaimed. "They're no more than acquaintances, and
ought not to be spoken of at all. And as for Mrs. Perley, if any one's
thinking of her, she's only been here four years, and that gives her no
claim whatever, considering that we've been lifelong friends and
neighbors of Sarah Cliff.
"And now, in behalf of all of us, I ask you, Miss Inchman, will you
speak to Mrs. Cliff?"
Miss Inchman was rather a small woman, spare in figure, and she wore
glasses, which seemed to be of a peculiar kind, for while they enabled
her to see through them into surrounding space, they did not allow
people who looked at her to see through them into her eyes. People often
remarked that you could not tell the color of Miss Inchman's eyes when
she had her spectacles on.
Thus it was that although her eyes were sometimes brighter than at other
times, and this could be noticed through her spectacles, it was
difficult to understand her expression and to discover whether she was
angry or amused.
Now Miss Inchman's eyes behind her spectacles brightened very much as
she looked from Miss Cushing to the other members of the little party
who had constituted themselves the heirs of Mrs. Cliff. None of them
could judge from her face what she was likely to say, but they all
waited to hear what she would say. At this moment the door opened, and
Mrs. Cliff entered the parlor.
CHAPTER X
THE INTELLECT OF MISS INCHMAN
It was true that on that morning Mrs. Cliff had been standing in her
front yard looking as her best friends would not have liked her to look.
There was nothing physically the matter with her, but she was
dissatisfied and somewhat disturbed in her mind. Mr. Burke was so busy
nowadays that when he stopped in to see her it was only for a few
minutes, and Willy Croup had developed a great facility in discovering
things which ought to be attended to in various parts of the town, and
of going to attend to them with Andrew Marks to drive her.
Not only did Mrs. Cliff feel that she was left more to herself than she
liked, but she had the novel experience of not being able to find
interesting occupation. She was was glad to have servants who could
perform all the household duties, and could have done more if they had
had a chance. Still, it was unpleasant to feel that she herself could do
so little to fill up her unoccupied moments. So she put on a shawl and
went into her front yard, simply to walk about and get a little of the
fresh air. But when she went out of the door, she stood still
contemplating the front fence.
Here was a fence which had been an eyesore to her for two or three
years! She believed she had money enough to fence in the whole State,
and yet those shabby palings and posts must offend her eye every time
she came out of her door! The flowers were nearly all dead now, and she
would have had a new fence immediately, but Mr. Burke had dissuaded her,
saying that when the new dining-room was brought over from the corner
lot there would have to be a fence around the whole premises, and it
would be better to have it all done at once.
"There are so many things which I can afford just as well as not," she
said to herself, "and which I cannot do!" And it was the unmistakable
doleful expression upon her countenance, as she thought this, which was
the foundation of Miss Shott's remarks to her neighbors on the subject
of Mrs. Cliff's probable early demise.
Miss Shott was passing on the other side of the street, and she was
walking rapidly, but she could see more out of the corner of her eye
than most people could see when they were looking straight before them
at the same things.
Suddenly Mrs. Cliff determined that she must do something. She felt
blue,--she wanted to talk to somebody. And, feeling thus, she naturally
went into the house, put on her bonnet and her wrap, and walked down to
see Miss Cushing. There was not anything in particular that she wanted
to see her about, but there was work going on and she might talk about
it; or, it might happen that she would be inclined to give some orders.
She was always glad to do anything she could to help that hard-working
and kind-hearted neighbor!
When Mrs. Cliff entered the parlor of Miss Cushing, five women each gave
a sudden start. The dressmaker was so thrown off her balance that she
dropped her sewing on the floor, and rising, went forward to shake her
visitor by the hand, a thing she was not in the habit of doing to
anybody, because, as is well known to all the world, a person who is
sewing for a livelihood cannot get up to shake hands with the friends
and acquaintances who may happen in upon her. At this the other ladies
rose and shook hands, and it might have been supposed that the new-comer
had just returned from a long absence. Then Miss Cushing gave Mrs. Cliff
a chair, and they all sat down again.
Mrs. Cliff looked about her with a smile. The sight of these old friends
cheered her. All her blues were beginning to fade, as that color always
fades in any kind of sunshine.
"I'm glad to see so many of you together," she said. "It almost seems as
if you were having some sort of meeting. What is it about,--can't I join
in?"
At this there was a momentary silence which threatened to become very
embarrassing if it continued a few seconds more, and Miss Cushing was on
the point of telling the greatest lie of her career, trusting that the
other heirs would stand by her and support her in whatever statements
she made, feeling as they must the absolute necessity of saying
something instantly. But Miss Inchman spoke before any one else had a
chance to do so.
"You're right, Mrs. Cliff," said she, "we are considering something! We
didn't come here on purpose to talk about it, but we happened in
together, and so we thought we would talk it over. And we all came to
the conclusion that it was something which ought to be mentioned to you,
and I was asked to speak to you about it."
Four simultaneous gasps were now heard in that little parlor, and four
chills ran down the backs of four self-constituted heirs.
"I must say, Susan," remarked Mrs. Cliff, with a good-humored smile, "if
you want me to do anything, there's no need of being so wonderfully
formal about it! If any one of you, or all of you together, for that
matter, have anything to say to me, all you had to do was to come and
say it."
"They didn't seem to think that way," said Miss Inchman. "They all
thought that what was to be said would come better from me because I'd
known you so long, and we had grown up together."
"It must be something out of the common," said Mrs. Cliff. "What in the
world can it be? If you are to speak, Susan, speak out at once! Let's
have it!"
"That's just what I'm going to do," said Miss Inchman.
If Mrs. Cliff had looked around at the four heirs who were sitting
upright in their chairs, gazing in horror at Miss Inchman, she would
have been startled, and, perhaps, frightened. But she did not see them.
She was so much interested in what her old friend Susan was saying, that
she gave to her her whole attention.
But now that their appointed spokeswoman had announced her intention of
immediately declaring the object of the meeting, each one of them felt
that this was no place for her! But, notwithstanding this feeling, not
one of them moved to go. Miss Cushing, of course, had no excuse for
leaving, for this was her own house; and although the others might have
pleaded errands, a power stronger than their disposition to
fly--stronger even than their fears of what Mrs. Cliff might say to them
when she knew all--kept them in their seats. The spell of self-interest
was upon them and held them fast. Whatever was said and whatever was
done they must be there! At this supreme moment they could not leave the
room. They nerved themselves, they breathed hard, and listened!
"You see, Sarah," said Miss Inchman, "we must all die!"
"That's no new discovery," answered Mrs. Cliff, and the remark seemed to
her so odd that she looked around at the rest of the company to see how
they took it; and she was thereupon impressed with the idea that some of
them had not thought of this great truth of late, and that its sudden
announcement had thrown them into a shocked solemnity.
But the soul of Miss Cushing was more than shocked,--it was filled with
fury! If there had been in that room at that instant a loaded gun
pointed towards Miss Inchman, Miss Cushing would have pulled the
trigger. This would have been wicked, she well knew, and contrary to her
every principle, but never before had she been confronted by such
treachery!
"Well," continued Miss Inchman, "as we must die, we ought to make
ourselves ready for it in every way that we can. And we've been
thinking--"
At this moment the endurance of Mrs. Ferguson gave way. The pace and the
strain were too great for her. Each of the others had herself to think
for, but she had not only herself, but two daughters. She gave a groan,
her head fell back, her eyes closed, and with a considerable thump she
slipped from her chair to the floor. Instantly every one screamed and
sprang towards her.
"What in the world is the matter with her?" cried Mrs. Cliff, as she
assisted the others to raise the head of the fainting woman and to
loosen her dress.
"Oh, I suppose it's the thought of her late husband!" promptly replied
Miss Inchman, who felt that it devolved on her to say something, and
that quickly. Mrs. Cliff looked up in amazement.
"And what has Mr. Ferguson to do with anything?" she asked.
"Oh, it's the new cemetery I was going to talk to you about," said Miss
Inchman. "It has been spoken of a good deal since you went away, and we
all thought that if you'd agree to go into it--"
"Go into it!" cried Mrs. Cliff, in horror.
"I mean, join with the people who are in favor of it," said Miss
Inchman. "I haven't time to explain,--she's coming to now, if you'll all
let her alone! All I've time to say is, that those who had husbands in
the old graveyard and might perhaps be inclined to move them and put up
monuments, had the right to be first spoken to. Although, of course,
it's a subject which everybody doesn't care to speak about, and as for
Mrs. Ferguson, it's no wonder, knowing her as we do, that she went off
in this way when she knew what I was going to say, although, in fact, I
wasn't in the least thinking of Mr. Ferguson!"
The speaker had barely time to finish before the unfortunate lady who
had fainted, opened her eyes, looked about her, and asked where she was.
And now that she had revived, no further reference could be made to the
unfortunate subject which had caused her to swoon.
"I don't see," said Mrs. Cliff, as she stood outside with Miss Inchman,
a few minutes later, "why Mr. Ferguson's removal--I'm sure it isn't
necessary to make it if she doesn't want to--should trouble Mrs.
Ferguson any more than the thought of Mr. Cliff's removal troubles me.
I'm perfectly willing to do what I can for the new cemetery, and nobody
need think I'm such a nervous hysterical person that I'm in danger of
popping over if the subject is mentioned to me. So when you all are
ready to have another meeting, I hope you will let me know!"
When Mrs. Ferguson felt herself well enough to sit up and take a glass
of water, with something stimulating in it, she was informed of the
nature of the statements which had been finally made to Mrs. Cliff.
"You know, of course," added Miss Cushing, still pale from unappeased
rage, "that that Susan Inchman began as she did, just to spite us!"
"It's just like her!" said Mrs. Archibald. "But I never could have
believed that such a dried codfish of a woman could have so much
intellect!"
CHAPTER XI
THE ARRIVAL OF THE NEW DINING-ROOM
The little meeting at the house of Miss Cushing resulted in something
very different from the anticipations of those ladies who had consulted
together for the purpose of constituting themselves the heirs of Mrs.
Cliff.
That good lady being then very much in want of something to do was so
pleased with the idea of a new cemetery that she entered into the scheme
with great earnestness. She was particularly pleased with this
opportunity of making good use of her money, because, having been asked
by others to join them in this work, she was not obliged to pose as a
self-appointed public benefactor.
Mrs. Cliff worked so well in behalf of the new cemetery and subscribed
so much money towards it, through Mr. Perley, that it was not many
months before it became the successor to the little crowded graveyard
near the centre of the town; and the remains of Mr. Cliff were removed
to a handsome lot and overshadowed by a suitable monument.
Mrs. Ferguson, however, in speaking with Mrs. Cliff upon the subject,
was happy to have an opportunity of assuring her that she thought it
much better to devote her slender means to the education of her
daughters than to the removal of her late husband to a more eligible
resting-place.
"I'm sure he's done very well as he is for all these years," she said,
"and if he could have a voice in the matter, I'm quite sure that he
would prefer his daughters' education to his own removal."
Mrs. Cliff did not wish to make any offer which might hurt Mrs.
Ferguson's very sensitive feelings, but she said that she had no doubt
that arrangements could be made by which Mr. Ferguson's transfer could
be effected without interfering with any plans which might have been
made for the benefit of his daughters; but, although this remark did not
satisfy Mrs. Ferguson, she was glad of even this slight opportunity of
bringing the subject of her daughters' education before the
consideration of her friend.
As to the other would-be heirs, they did not immediately turn upon Miss
Inchman and rend her in revenge for the way in which she had tricked and
frightened them, for there was no knowing what such a woman would do if
she were exasperated, and not for the world would they have Mrs. Cliff
find out the real subject of their discussion on that unlucky morning
when she made herself decidedly one too many in Miss Cushing's parlor.
Consequently, all attempts at concerted action were dropped, and each
for herself determined that Mrs. Cliff should know that she was a true
friend, and to trust to the good lady's well-known gratitude and
friendly feeling when the time should come for her to apportion her
worldly goods among the dear ones she would leave behind her.
There were certain articles in Mrs. Cliff's house for which each of her
friends had a decided admiration, and remarks were often made which it
was believed would render it impossible for Mrs. Cliff to make a mistake
when she should be planning her will, and asking herself to whom she
should give this, and to whom that?
It was about a week after the events in Miss Cushing's parlor, that
something occurred which sent a thrill through the souls of a good many
people in Plainton, affecting them more or less according to their
degree of sensibility.
Willy Croup, who had been driven about the town attending to various
matters of business and pleasure, was informed by Andrew Marks, as she
alighted about four o'clock in the afternoon at the house of an
acquaintance, that he hoped she would not stop very long because he had
some business of his own to attend to that afternoon, and he wanted to
get the horse cared for and the cow milked as early as possible, so that
he might lock up the barn and go away. To this Willy answered that he
need not wait for her, for she could easily walk home when she had
finished her visit.
But when she left the house, after a protracted call, she did not walk
very far, for it so happened that Mr. Burke, who had found leisure that
afternoon to take a drive in his barouche, came up behind her, and very
naturally stopped and offered to take her home. Willy, quite as
naturally, accepted the polite proposition and seated herself in the
barouche by the side of the fur-trimmed overcoat and the high silk hat.
Thus it was that the people of the town who were in the main street that
afternoon, or who happened to be at doors or windows; that the very
birds of the air, hopping about on trees or house-tops; that the horses,
dogs, and cats; that even the insects, whose constitutions were strong
enough to enable them to buzz about in the autumn sunlight, beheld the
startling sight of Willy Croup and the fine gentleman at the hotel
riding together, side by side, in broad daylight, through the most
public street of the town.
Once before these two had been seen together out of doors, but then they
had been walking, and almost any two people who knew each other and who
might be walking in the same direction, could, without impropriety walk
side by side and converse as they went; but now the incident was very
different.
It created a great impression, not all to the advantage of Mr. Burke,
for, after the matter had been very thoroughly discussed, it was
generally conceded that he must be no better than a fortune-hunter.
Otherwise, why should he be paying attention to Willy Croup, who, as
everybody knew, was not a day under forty-five years old, and therefore
at least ten years older than the gentleman at the hotel.
In regard to the fortune which he was hunting, there was no difference
of opinion; whatever Mrs. Cliff's fortune might be, this Mr. Burke
wanted it. Of course, he would not endeavor to gain his object by
marrying the widow, for she was entirely too old for him; but if he
married Willy, her only relative, that would not be quite so bad as to
age, and there could be no doubt that these two would ultimately come
into Mrs. Cliff's fortune, which was probably more than had been
generally supposed. She had always been very close-mouthed about her
affairs, and there were some who said that even in her early days of
widowhood she might have been more stingy than she was poor. She must
have considerable property, or Mr. Burke would not be so anxious to get
it.
Thus it happened that the eventful drive in the barouche had a very
different effect upon the reputations of the three persons concerned.
Mr. Burke was lowered from his position as a man of means enjoying his
fortune, for even his building operations were probably undertaken for
the purpose of settling himself in Mrs. Cliff's neighborhood, and so
being able to marry Willy as soon as possible.
Willy Croup, although everybody spoke of her conduct as absolutely
ridiculous and even shameful, rose in public estimation simply from the
belief that she was about to marry a man who, whatever else he might be,
was of imposing appearance and was likely to be rich.
As to Mrs. Cliff, there could be no doubt that the general respect for
her was on the increase. If she were rich enough to attract Mr. Burke to
the town, she was probably rich enough to do a good many other things,
and after all it might be that that new house at the corner was being
built with her money.
Miss Shott was very industrious and energetic in expressing her opinion
of Mr. Burke. "There's a chambermaid at the hotel," she said, "who's
told me a lot of things about him, and it's very plain to my mind that
he isn't the gentleman that he makes himself out to be! His
handkerchiefs and his hair-brush aren't the kind that go with fur
overcoats and high hats, and she has often seen him stop in the hall
downstairs and black his own boots! Everybody knows he was a sailor, but
as to his ever having commanded a vessel, I don't believe a word of it!
But Willy Croup and that man needn't count on their schemes coming out
all right, for Sarah Cliff isn't any older than I am, and she's just as
likely to outlive them as she is to die before them!"
The fact that nobody had ever said that Burke had commanded a vessel,
and that Miss Shott had started the belief that Mrs. Cliff was in a
rapid decline, entirely escaped the attention of her hearers, so
interested were they in the subject of the unworthiness of the fine
gentleman at the hotel.
Winter had not yet really set in when George Burke, who had perceived no
reason to imagine that he had made a drop in public estimation, felt
himself stirred by emotions of triumphant joy. The new building on the
corner lot was on the point of completion!
Workmen and master-workmen, mechanics and laborers, had swarmed in,
over, and about the new edifice in such numbers that sometimes they
impeded each other. Close upon the heels of the masons came the
carpenters, and following them the plumbers and the plasterers; while
the painters impatiently restrained themselves in order to give their
predecessors time to get out of their way.
The walls and ceilings were covered with the plaster which would dry the
quickest, and the paper-hangers entered the rooms almost before the
plasterers could take away their trowels and their lime-begrimed hats
and coats. Cleaners with their brooms and pails jostled the mechanics,
as the latter left the various rooms, and everywhere strode Mr. Burke.
He had made up his mind that the building must be ready to move into the
instant it arrived at its final destination.
It was a very different building from what Mrs. Cliff had proposed to
herself when she decided to add a dining-room to her old house. It was
so different indeed, that after having gone two or three times to look
upon the piles of lumber and stone and the crowds of men, digging, and
hammering, and sawing on the corner lot, she had decided to leave the
whole matter in the hands of Mr. Burke, the architect, and the
contractor. And when Willy Croup endeavored to explain to her what was
going on, she always stopped her, saying that she would wait until it
was done and then she would understand it.
Mr. Burke too had urged her, especially as the building drew near to
completion, not to bother herself in the least about it, but to give him
the pleasure of presenting it to her entirely finished and ready for
occupancy. So even the painting and paper-hanging had been left to a
professional decorator, and Mrs. Cliff assured Burke that she was
perfectly willing to wait for the new dining-room until it was ready for
her.
This dining-room, large and architecturally handsome, was planned, as
has been said, so that one of its doors should fit exactly against the
side hall door of the little house, but the other door of the
dining-room opened into a wide and elegant hall, at one end of which was
a portico and spacious front steps. On the other side of this hall was a
handsome drawing-room, and behind the drawing-room and opening into it,
an alcove library with a broad piazza at one side of it. Back of the
dining-room was a spacious kitchen, with pantries, closets, scullery,
and all necessary adjuncts.
In the second and third stories of the edifice were large and beautiful
bedrooms, small and neat bedrooms, bath-rooms, servants' rooms,
trunk-rooms, and every kind of room that modern civilization demands.
Now that the building was finished, Mr. Burke almost regretted that he
had not constructed it upon the top of a hill in order that he might
have laid his smooth and slippery timbers from the eminence to the side
of Mrs. Cliff's house, so that when all should be ready he could have
knocked away the blocks which held the building, so that he could have
launched it as if it had been a ship, and could have beheld it sliding
gracefully and rapidly from its stocks into its appointed position. But
as this would probably have resulted in razing Mrs. Cliff's old house to
the level of the ground, he did not long regret that he had not been
able to afford himself the pleasure of this grand spectacle.
The night before the day on which the new building was to be moved, the
lot next to Mrs. Cliff's house was covered by masons, laborers, and
wagons hauling stones, and by breakfast-time the next morning the new
cellar was completed.
Almost immediately the great timbers, which, polished and greased, had
been waiting for several days, were put in their places, and the great
steam engines and windlasses, which had been ready as long a time, were
set in motion. And, as the house began to move upon its course, it
almost missed a parting dab from the brush of a painter who was at work
upon some final trimming.
That afternoon, as Mrs. Cliff happened to be in her dining-room, she
remarked to Willy that it was getting dark very early, but she would not
pull up the blind of the side window, because she would then look out on
the new cellar, and she had promised Mr. Burke not to look at anything
until he had told her to do so. Willy, who had looked out of the side
door at least fifty times that day, knew that the early darkness was
caused by the shadows thrown by a large building slowly approaching from
the west.
When Mrs. Cliff came downstairs the next morning she was met by Willy,
very much excited, who told her that Mr. Burke wished to see her.
"Where is he?" said she. "At the dining-room door," answered Willy, and
as Mrs. Cliff turned towards the little room in which she had been
accustomed to take her meals, Willy seized her hand and led her into
the side hall. There, in the open doorway, stood Mr. Burke, his high
silk hat in one hand, and the other outstretched towards her.
"Welcome to your new dining-room, madam!" said he, as he took her hand
and led her into the great room, which seemed to her, as she gazed in
amazement about her, like a beautiful public hall.
We will not follow Mrs. Cliff, Willy, and the whole body of domestic
servants, as they passed through the halls and rooms of that grand
addition to Mrs. Cliff's little house.
"Carpets and furniture is all that you want, madam!" said Burke, "and
then you're at home!"
When Mrs. Cliff had been upstairs and downstairs, and into every
chamber, and when she had looked out of the window and had beheld
hundreds of men at work upon the grounds and putting up fences; and when
Mr. Burke had explained to her that the people at the back of the lot
were beginning to erect a stable and carriage house,--for no dining-room
such as she had was complete, he assured her, without handsome quarters
for horses and carriages,--she left him and went downstairs by herself.
As she stood by the great front door and looked up at the wide
staircase, and into the lofty rooms upon each side, there came to her,
rising above all sentiments of amazement, delight, and pride in her new
possessions, a feeling of animated and inspiring encouragement. The
mists of doubt and uncertainty, which had hung over her, began to clear
away. This noble edifice must have cost grandly! And, for the first
time, she began to feel that she might yet be equal to her fortune.
CHAPTER XII
THE THORPEDYKE SISTERS
The new and grand addition to Mrs. Cliff's house, which had been so
planned that the little house to which it had been joined appeared to be
an architecturally harmonious adjunct to it, caused a far greater
sensation in Plainton than the erection of any of the public buildings
therein.
Its journey from the corner lot was watched by hundreds of spectators,
and now Mrs. Cliff, Willy, and Mr. Burke spent day and evening in
exhibiting and explaining this remarkable piece of building enterprise.
Mr. Burke was very jolly. He took no credit to himself for the planning
of the house, which, as he truthfully said, had been the work of an
architect who had suggested what was proper and had been allowed to do
it. But he did feel himself privileged to declare that if every crew
building a house were commanded by a person of marine experience, things
would move along a good deal more briskly than they generally did, and
to this assertion he found no one to object.
Mrs. Cliff was very happy in wandering over her new rooms, and in
assuring herself that no matter how grand they might be when they were
all furnished and fitted up, nothing had been done which would interfere
with the dear old home which she had loved so long. It is true that one
of the windows of the little dining-room was blocked up, but that window
was not needed.
Mr. Burke was not willing to give Mrs. Cliff more than a day or two for
the contemplation of her new possessions, and urged upon her that while
the chimneys were being erected and the heating apparatus was being put
into the house, she ought to attend to the selection and purchase of the
carpets, furniture, pictures, and everything which was needed in the new
establishment.
Mrs. Cliff thought this good advice, and proposed a trip to Boston; but
Burke did not think that would do at all, and declared that New York was
the only place where she could get everything she needed. Willy, who was
to accompany Mrs. Cliff, had been to Boston, but had never visited New
York, and she strongly urged the claims of the latter city, and an
immediate journey to the metropolis was agreed upon.
But when Mrs. Cliff considered the magnitude and difficulties of the
work she was about to undertake, she wished for the counsel and advice
of some one besides Willy. This good little woman was energetic and
enthusiastic, but she had had no experience in regard to the furnishing
of a really good house.
When, in her mind, she was running over the names of those who might be
able and willing to go with her and assist her, Mrs. Cliff suddenly
thought of the Thorpedyke ladies, and there her mental category stopped
as she announced to Willy that she was going to ask these ladies to go
with them to New York.
Willy thought well of this plan, but she had her doubts about Miss
Barbara, who was so quiet, domestic, and unused to travel that she might
be unwilling to cast herself into the din and whirl of the metropolis.
But when she and Mrs. Cliff went to make a call upon the Thorpedykes and
put the question before them, she was very much surprised to find that,
although the elder sister, after carefully considering the subject,
announced her willingness to oblige Mrs. Cliff, Miss Barbara agreed to
the plan with an alacrity which her visitors had never known her to
exhibit before.
As soon as the necessary preparations could be made, a party of five
left Plainton for New York, and a very well-assorted party it was! Mr.
Burke, who guided and commanded the expedition, supplied the impelling
energy; Mrs. Cliff had her check book with her; Willy was ready with any
amount of enthusiasm; and the past life of Miss Eleanor Thorpedyke and
her sister Barbara had made them most excellent judges of what was
appropriate for the worthy furnishing of a stately mansion.
Their youth and middle life had been spent near Boston, in a fine old
house which had been the home of their ancestors, and where they had
been familiar with wealth, distinguished society, and noble hospitality.
But when they had been left the sole representatives of their family,
and when misfortune after misfortune had come down upon them and swept
away their estates and nearly all of their income, they had retired to
the little town of Plainton where they happened to own a house.
There, with nothing saved from the wreck of their prosperity but their
family traditions, and some of the old furniture and pictures, they had
settled down to spend in quiet the rest of their lives.
For two weeks our party remained in New York, living at one of the best
hotels, but spending nearly all their time in shops and streets.
Mrs. Cliff was rapidly becoming a different woman from the old Mrs.
Cliff of Plainton. At the time she stepped inside of the addition to her
house the change had begun, and now it showed itself more and more each
day. She had seen more beautiful things in Paris, but there she looked
upon them with but little thought of purchasing. In New York whatever
she saw and desired she made her own.
The difference between a mere possessor of wealth and one who uses it
became very apparent to her. Not until now had she really known what it
was to be a rich woman. Not only did this consciousness of power swell
her veins with a proud delight, but it warmed and invigorated all her
better impulses. She had always been of a generous disposition, but now
she felt an intense good-will toward her fellow-beings, and wished that
other people could be as happy as she was.
She thought of Mrs. Ferguson and remembered what she had said about her
daughters. To be sure, Mrs. Ferguson was always trying to get people to
do things for her, and Mrs. Cliff did not fancy that class of women,
but now her wealth-warmed soul inclined her to overlook this prejudice,
and she said to herself that when she got home she would make
arrangements for those two girls to go to a good school; and, more than
that, she would see to it that Mr. Ferguson was moved. It seemed to her
just then that it would be a very cheerful thing to make other people
happy.
The taste and artistic judgment of the elder Miss Thorpedyke, which had
been dormant for years, simply because there was nothing upon which they
could exercise themselves, now awoke in their old vigor, and with Mrs.
Cliff's good sense, reinforced by her experience gained in wandering
among the treasures of Paris, the results of the shopping expedition
were eminently satisfactory. And, with the plan of the new building,
which Mr. Burke carried always with him, everything which was likely to
be needed in each room, hall, or stairway, was selected and purchased,
and as fast as this was done, the things were shipped to Plainton, where
people were ready to put them where they belonged.
Willy Croup was not always of service in the purchasing expeditions, for
she liked everything that she saw, and no sooner was an article produced
than she went into ecstasies over it; but as she had an intense desire
to see everything which New York contained, she did not at all confine
herself to the shops and bazaars. She went wherever she could and saw
all that it was possible for her to see; but in the midst of the sights
and attractions of the metropolis she was still Willy Croup.
One afternoon as she and Miss Barbara were passing along one of the side
streets on their return from an attempt to see how the poorer people
lived, Willy stopped in front of a blacksmith's shop where a man was
shoeing a horse.
"There!" she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with delight, "that's the
first thing I've seen that reminds me of home!"
"It is nice, isn't it!" said gentle Miss Barbara.
CHAPTER XIII
MONEY HUNGER
During the latter part of their sojourn in the city, Willy went about a
good deal with Miss Barbara because she thought this quiet, soft-spoken
lady was not happy and did not take the interest in handsome and costly
articles which was shown by her sister. She had been afraid that this
noisy bustling place would be too much for Miss Barbara, and now she was
sure she had been right.
The younger Miss Thorpedyke was unhappy, and with reason. For some
months a little house in Boston which had been their principal source of
income had not been rented. It needed repairs, and there was no money
with which to repair it. The agent had written that some one might
appear who would be willing to take it as it stood, but that this was
doubtful, and the heart of Miss Barbara sank very low. She was the
business woman of the family. She it was who had always balanced the
income and the expenditures. This adjustment had now become very
difficult indeed, and was only accomplished by adding a little debt to
the weight on the income scale.
She had said nothing to her sister about this sad change in their
affairs because she hoped against hope that soon they might have a
tenant, and she knew that her sister Eleanor was a woman of such strict
and punctilious honor that she would insist upon living upon plain
bread, if their supply of ready money was insufficient to buy anything
else. To see this sister insufficiently nourished was something which
Miss Barbara could not endure, and so, sorely against her disposition
and her conscience, she made some little debts; and these grew and grew
until at last they weighed her down until she felt as if she must always
look upon the earth and could never raise her head to the sky. And she
was so plump, and so white, and gentle, and quiet, and peaceful looking
that no one thought she had a care in the world until Willy Croup began
to suspect in New York that something was the matter with her, but did
not in the least attribute her friend's low spirits to the proper cause.
When Miss Barbara had favored so willingly and promptly the invitation
of Mrs. Cliff, she had done so because she saw in the New York visit a
temporary abolition of expense, and a consequent opportunity to lay up a
little money by which she might be able to satisfy for a time one of her
creditors who was beginning to suspect that she was not able to pay his
bill, and was therefore pressing her very hard. Even while she had been
in New York, this many-times rendered bill had been forwarded to her
with an urgent request that it be settled.
It was not strange, therefore, that a tear should sometimes come to the
eye of Miss Barbara when she stood by the side of her sister and Mrs.
Cliff and listened to them discussing the merits of some rich rugs or
pieces of furniture, and when she reflected that the difference in price
between two articles, one apparently as desirable as the other, which
was discussed so lightly by Mrs. Cliff and Eleanor, would pay that bill
which was eating into her soul, and settle, moreover, every other claim
against herself and her sister. But the tears were always wiped away
very quickly, and neither Mrs. Cliff nor the elder Miss Thorpedyke ever
noticed them.
But although Willy Croup was not at all a woman of acute perceptions,
she began to think that perhaps it was something more than the bustle
and noise of New York which was troubling Miss Barbara. And once, when
she saw her gazing with an earnest eager glare--and whoever would have
thought of any sort of a glare in Miss Barbara's eyes--upon some
bank-notes which Mrs. Cliff was paying out for a carved cabinet for
which it was a little doubtful if a suitable place could be found, but
which was bought because Miss Eleanor thought it would give an air of
distinction in whatever room it might be placed, Willy began to suspect
the meaning of that unusual exhibition of emotion.
"She's money hungry," she said to herself, "that's what's the matter
with her!" Willy had seen the signs of such hunger before, and she
understood what they meant.
That night Willy lay in her bed, having the very unusual experience of
thinking so much that she could not sleep. Her room adjoined Miss
Barbara's, and the door between them was partly open, for the latter
lady was timid. Perhaps it was because this door was not closed that
Willy was so wakeful and thoughtful, for there was a bright light in the
other room, and she could not imagine why Miss Barbara should be sitting
up so late. It was a proceeding entirely at variance with her usual
habits. She was in some sort of trouble, it was easy to see that, but it
would be a great deal better to go to sleep and try to forget it.
So after a time Willy rose, and, softly stepping over the thick carpet,
looked into the other room. There was Miss Barbara in her day dress,
sitting at a table, her arms upon the table, her head upon her arms,
fast asleep. Upon her pale face there were a great many tear marks, and
Willy knew that she must have cried herself to sleep. A paper was spread
out near her.
Willy was sure that it would be a very mean and contemptible thing for
her to go and look at that paper, and so, perhaps, find out what was
troubling Miss Barbara, but, without the slightest hesitation, she did
it. Her bare feet made no sound upon the carpet, and as she had very
good eyes, it was not necessary for her to approach close to the
sleeper.
It was a bill from William Bullock, a grocer and provision dealer of
Plainton. It contained but one item,--'To bill rendered,' and at the
bottom was a statement in Mr. Bullock's own handwriting to the effect
that if the bill was not immediately paid he would be obliged to put it
into the hands of a collector.
Willy turned and slipped back into her room. Then, after sitting down
upon her bed and getting up again, she stepped boldly to the door and
knocked upon it. Instantly she heard Miss Barbara start and push back
her chair.
"What are you doing up so late?" cried Willy, cheerfully. "Don't you
feel well?"
"Oh, yes," replied the other, "I accidentally fell asleep while reading,
but I will go to bed instantly."
The mind of Willy Croup was a very small one and had room in it for but
one idea at a time. For a good while she lay putting ideas into this
mind, and then taking them out again. Having given place to the
conviction that the Thorpedykes were in a very bad way indeed,--for if
that bill should be collected, they would not have much left but
themselves, and Mr. Bullock was a man who did collect when he said he
would,--she was obliged to remove this conviction, which made her cry,
in order to consider plans of relief; and while she was considering
these plans, one at a time, she dropped asleep.
The first thing she thought of when she opened her eyes in the morning
was poor Miss Barbara in the next room, and that dreadful bill; and
then, like a flash of lightning, she thought of a good thing to do for
the Thorpedykes. The project which now laid itself out, detail after
detail, before her seemed so simple, so sensible, so absolutely wise and
desirable in every way, that she got up, dressed herself with great
rapidity, and went in to see Mrs. Cliff.
That lady was still asleep, but Willy awakened her, and sat on the side
of the bed. "Do you know what I think?" said Willy.
"How in the world should I!" said Mrs. Cliff. "Is it after
breakfast-time?"
"No," said Willy; "but it's this! What are you going to do in that big
house, with all the bedrooms, parlor, library, and so forth? You say
that you are going to have one room, and that I'm to have another, and
that we'll go into the old house to feel at home whenever we want to;
but I believe we'll be like a couple of flies in a barrel! You're going
to furnish your new house with everything but people! You ought to have
more people! You ought to have a family! That house will look funny
without people! You can't ask Mr. Burke, because it would be too queer
to have him come and live with us, and besides, he'll want a house of
his own. Why don't you ask the Thorpedykes to come and live with us?
Their roof is dreadfully out of repairs. I know to my certain knowledge
that they have to put tin wash-basins on every bed in the second story
when it rains, on account of the holes in the shingles! If they had
money to mend those holes, they'd mend them, but as they don't mend
them, of course they haven't the money. And it strikes me that they
aren't as well off as they used to be, and they'll have a hard time
gettin' through this winter. Now, there isn't any piece of furniture
that you can put in your house that will give it 'such an air of
distinction,' as Miss Eleanor calls it, as she herself will give it if
you put her there! If you could persuade Miss Eleanor to come and sit in
your parlor when you are having company to see you, it would set you up
in Plainton a good deal higher than any money can set you up."
"They would never agree to anything of the kind," said Mrs. Cliff, "and
you know it, Willy!"
"I don't believe it," said Willy. "I believe they'd come! Just see how
willing they were to come here with you! I tell you, Sarah, that the
older and older those Thorpedyke ladies get, the more timid they get,
and the more unwilling to live by themselves!
"If you make Miss Eleanor understand that it would be the greatest
comfort and happiness to both of us if she would come and spend the
winter with you, and so help you to get used to your great big new
house; and more than that, if they'd bring with them some of their
candle-sticks and pictures on ivory and that sort of thing, which
everybody knows can't be bought for money, it would be the great
accommodation to you and make your house look something like what you
would like to have it. I believe that old-family lady would come and
stay with you this winter, and think all the time that she was giving
you something that you ought to have and which nobody in Plainton could
give you but herself. And as to Miss Barbara, she'd come along as quick
as lightning!"
"Willy," said Mrs. Cliff, very earnestly, "have you any good reason to
believe that the Thorpedykes are in money trouble?"
"Yes, I have," said Willy, "I'm positive of it, and what's more, it's
only Miss Barbara who knows it!"
Mrs. Cliff sat for some minutes without answering, and then she said,
"Willy, you do sometimes get into your head an idea that absolutely
sparkles!"
CHAPTER XIV
WILLY CROUP AS A PHILANTHROPIC DIPLOMATIST
Mrs. Cliff was late to breakfast that day, and the reason was that
thinking so much about what Willy had said to her she had been very slow
in dressing. As soon as she had a chance, Mrs. Cliff took Willy aside
and told her that she had determined to adopt her advice about the
Thorpedykes.
"The more I think of the plan," she said, "the better I like it! But we
must be very, very careful about what we do. If Miss Eleanor suspects
that I invite them to come to my house because I think they are poor,
she will turn into solid stone, and we will find we cannot move her an
inch,--but I think I can manage it! When we go home, I will tell them
how pleasant we found it for us all to be together, and speak of the
loneliness of my new big house. If I can get Miss Eleanor to believe
that she is doing me a favor, she may be willing to come; but on no
account, Willy, do you say a word to either of them about this plan. If
you do, you will spoil everything, for that's your way, Willy, and you
know it!"
Willy promised faithfully that she would not interfere in the least; but
although she was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, she was not
happy. How could she be happy knowing what she did about Miss Barbara?
That poor lady was looking sadder than ever, and Willy was very much
afraid that she had had another letter from that horrid Mr. Bullock,
with whom, she was delighted to think, Mrs. Cliff had never dealt.
It would be some days yet before they would go home and make the new
arrangement, and then there would be the bill and the collector, and all
that horrid business, and if Miss Eleanor found out the condition of
affairs,--and if the bill was not paid, she must find out,--she would
never come to them. She would probably stay at home and live on bread!
Now, it so happened that Willy had in her own possession more than
enough money to pay that wretched Bullock bill. Mrs. Cliff made her no
regular allowance, but she had given her all the money that she might
reasonably expect to spend in New York, and Willy had spent but very
little of it, for she found it the most difficult thing in the world to
select what it was she wanted out of all the desirable things she saw.
It would rejoice her heart to transfer this money to Miss Barbara; but
how in the world could she do it? She first thought that she might offer
to buy something that was in the Thorpedyke house, but she knew this
idea was absurd. Then she thought of mentioning, in an off-hand way,
that she would like to put some money out at interest, and thus,
perhaps, induce Miss Barbara to propose a business transaction. But this
would not do. Even Miss Barbara would suspect some concealed motive.
Idea after idea came to her, but she could think of no satisfactory plan
of getting that money into Miss Barbara's possession.
She did not go out with the party that morning, but sat in her room
trying in vain to solve this problem. At last she gave it up and
determined to do what she wanted to do without any plan whatever.
She went into Miss Barbara's room and placed upon the table, in the very
spot where the bill had been lying, some bank-notes, considerably more
than sufficient to pay the amount of the bill, which amount she well
remembered. It would not do to leave just money enough, for that would
excite suspicion. And so placing Miss Barbara's hair-brush upon the
bank-notes, so that she would be sure not to overlook them, for she
would not think of going down to luncheon without brushing her hair,
Willy retired to her own room, nearly closing the door, leaving only a
little crack through which she might see if any servant entered the room
before Miss Barbara came back.
Then Willy set herself industriously to work hemming a pocket
handkerchief. She could not do this very well, because she was not at
all proficient in fine sewing, but she worked with great energy,
waiting and listening for Miss Barbara's entrance.
At last, after a long time, Willy heard the outer door of the other room
open, and glancing through the crack, she saw Miss Barbara enter. Then
she twisted herself around towards the window and began to sew savagely,
with a skill much better adapted to the binding of carpets than to any
sort of work upon cambric handkerchiefs.
In a few minutes she heard a little exclamation in the next room, and
then her door was opened suddenly, without the customary knock, and Miss
Barbara marched in. Her face was flushed.
"Willy Croup," said she, "what is the meaning of that money on my
table?"
"Money?" said Willy, turning towards her with as innocent an expression
as her burning cheeks and rapidly winking eyes would permit; "what do
you mean by--money?"
Miss Barbara stood silent for some moments while Willy vainly endeavored
to thread the point of her needle.
"Willy," said Miss Barbara, "did you come into my room last night, and
look at the bill which was on my table?"
Now Willy dropped her needle, thread, and handkerchief, and stood up.
"Yes, I did!" said she. Miss Barbara was now quite pale.
"And you read the note which Mr. Bullock had put at the bottom of it?"
"Yes, I read it!" said Willy.
"And don't you know," said the other, "that to do such a thing was
most--"
"Yes, I do!" interrupted Willy. "I knew it then and I know it now, but I
don't care any more now than I did then! I put it there because I wanted
to! And if you'll take it, Miss Barbara, and pay it back to me any time
when you feel like it,--and you can pay me interest at ten per cent if
you want to, and that will make it all right, you know; and oh, Miss
Barbara! I know all about that sort of bill, because they used to come
when my father was alive. And if you'd only take it, you don't know how
happy I would be!"
At this she began to cry, and then Miss Barbara burst into tears, and
the two sat down beside each other on a lounge and cried earnestly, hand
in hand, for nearly ten minutes.
"I'm so glad you'll take it!" said Willy, when Miss Barbara went into
her room, "and you may be just as sure as you're sure of anything that
nobody but our two selves will ever know anything about it!"
Immediately after luncheon Miss Barbara went by herself to the
post-office, and when she came back her sister said to her that New York
must just be beginning to agree with her.
"It is astonishing," said Miss Eleanor, "how long it takes some people
to get used to a change, but it often happens that if one stays long
enough in the new place, great benefit will be experienced, whereas, if
the stay is short, there may be no good result whatever!"
That afternoon Mrs. Cliff actually laughed at Miss Barbara--a thing she
had never done before. They were in a large jewelry store where they
were looking at clocks, and Miss Barbara, who had evinced a sudden
interest in the beautiful things about her, called Mrs. Cliff's
attention to a lovely necklace of pearls.
"If I were you," said Miss Barbara, "I would buy something like that! I
should not want to wear it, perhaps, but it would be so delightful to
sit and look at it!"
The idea of Miss Barbara thinking of buying necklaces of pearls! No
wonder Mrs. Cliff laughed.
When the party returned to Plainton, Mrs. Cliff was amazed to find her
new house almost completely furnished; and no time was lost in proposing
the Thorpedyke project, for Mrs. Cliff felt that it would be wise to
make the proposition while the sense of companionship was still fresh
upon them all.
Miss Thorpedyke was very much surprised when the plan was proposed to
her, but it produced a pleasant effect upon her. She had much enjoyed
the company she had been in; she had always liked society, and lately
had had very little of it, for no matter how good and lovable sisters
may be, they are sometimes a little tiresome when they are sole
companions.
As to Barbara, she trembled as she thought of Mrs. Cliff's offer:
trembled with joy, which she could not repress; and trembled with fear
that her sister might not accept it. But it was of no use for her to say
anything,--and she said nothing. Eleanor always decided such questions
as these.
After a day's consideration Miss Thorpedyke came to a conclusion, and
she sent Miss Barbara with a message to Mrs. Cliff to the effect that as
the winters were always lonely, and as it would be very pleasant for
them all to be together, she would, if Mrs. Cliff thought it would be an
advantage to her, come with her sister and live in some portion of the
new building which Mrs. Cliff did not intend to be otherwise occupied,
and that they would pay whatever board Mrs. Cliff thought reasonable and
proper; but in order to do this, it would be necessary for them to rent
their present home. They would offer this house fully
furnished,--reserving the privilege of removing the most valuable
heirlooms which it now contained, and, as soon as such an arrangement
could be made, they would be willing to come to Mrs. Cliff and remain
with her during the winter.
When Miss Barbara had heard this decision her heart had fallen! She knew
that it would be almost impossible to find a tenant who would take that
house, especially for winter occupancy, and that even if a tenant could
be found, the rent would be very little. And she knew, moreover, that
having come to a decision Eleanor could not be moved from it.
She found Mr. Burke and Willy with Mrs. Cliff, but as he knew all about
the project and had taken great interest in it, she did not hesitate to
tell her message before him. Mrs. Cliff was very much disappointed.
"That ends the matter!" said she. "Your house cannot be rented for the
winter!"
"I don't know about that!" exclaimed Mr. Burke. "By George! I'll take
the house myself! I want a house,--I want just such a house; I want it
furnished,--except I don't want to be responsible for old heirlooms, and
I'm willing to pay a fair and reasonable rent for it; and I'm sure,
although I never had the pleasure of being in it, it ought to bring rent
enough to pay the board of any two ladies any winter, wherever they
might be!"
"But, Mr. Burke," Miss Barbara said, her voice shaking as she spoke, "I
must tell you, that the roof is very much out of repair, and--"
"Oh, that doesn't matter at all!" said Burke. "A tenant, if he's the
right sort of tenant, is bound to put a house into repair to suit
himself. I'll attend to the roof if it needs it, you may be sure of
that! And if it doesn't need it, I'll leave it just as it is! That'll be
all right, and you can tell your sister that you've found a tenant. I'm
getting dreadfully tired of living at that hotel, and a house of my own
is somethin' that I've never had before! But one thing I must ask of
you, Miss Thorpedyke: don't say anything to your sister about tobacco
smoke, and perhaps she will never think of it!"
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
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