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!"