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