When the interview with Mrs. Buskirk was reported that afternoon to Mrs. Cliff, the good lady sat aghast. "I\'ve decided about the park," she said, "and that is all very well. But what do you mean by a yacht? What could be more ridiculous than to talk about me and a yacht!"
"Ridiculous!" exclaimed Burke. "It\'s nothing of the kind! The more I think of the idea, the better I like it, and if you\'ll think of it soberly, I believe you\'ll like it just as much as I do! In the first place, you\'ve got to do something to keep your money from being dammed up and running all over everything. This house and furniture cleared away things for a time, but the whole business will be just as much clogged up as it was before if you don\'t look out. I don\'t want to give advice, but it does strike me that anybody as rich as you are oughtn\'t to feel that they could afford to sit still here in Plainton, year in and year out, no matter how fine a house they might have! They ought to think of that great heap of gold in the mound and feel that it was their duty to get all the grand and glorious good out of it that they knew how!"
"But it does seem to me," said Mrs. Cliff, "that a yacht would be an absolute extravagance and waste of money. And, you know, I have firmly determined I will not waste my money."
"To call sittin\' in a beautiful craft, on a rollin\' sea,[Pg 148] with a spankin\' breeze, a waste of money, is something I can\'t get into my brain!" said Mr. Burke. "But you could do good with a yacht. You could take people out on cruises who would never get out if you didn\'t take them! And now I\'ve an idea! It\'s just come to me. You might get a really big yacht. If I was you, I\'d have a steam yacht, because you\'d have more control over that than you\'d have over a sailin\'-vessel, and besides a person can get tired of sailin\'-vessels, as I\'ve found out myself. And then you might start a sort of summer shelter for poor people; not only very poor people, but respectable people, who never get a chance to sniff salt air. And you might spend part of the summer in giving such people what would be the same as country weeks, only you\'d take them out to sea instead of shipping them inland to dawdle around farms. I tell you that\'s a splendid idea, and nobody\'s done it."
Day after day, the project of the yacht was discussed by Mrs. Cliff and Burke, and she was beginning to view its benevolent features with a degree of favor when Mrs. Buskirk called. That lady\'s visit was prompted partly by a curiosity to see what sort of a woman was the widow of the Plainton storekeeper who would cruise the next summer in her yacht; and partly by a feeling that to such a person a certain amount of respect was due even from a Buskirk.
But when she entered the house, passed through the great hall, and seated herself in the drawing-room, she saw more than she had expected to see. She saw a house immeasurably better fitted out and furnished[Pg 149] than her own. She knew the value of the rugs which Miss Shott had declared must have cost at least twenty dollars each, and she felt, although she did not thoroughly appreciate, the difference in artistic merit between the pictures upon her walls and the masterly paintings which had been selected by the ladies Thorpedyke for the drawing-room of Mrs. Cliff.
The discovery startled her. She must talk to her husband about it as soon as he reached home. It was not only money, but a vast deal of money, and something more, which had done all this.
She had asked for the ladies, knowing that Mrs. Cliff did not live alone, and all the ladies were at home. Amid those surroundings, the elder Miss Thorpedyke, most carefully arrayed, made an impression upon Mrs. Buskirk very different from that she had produced on the occasion of their single former interview in the darkened little parlor of the Thorpedyke house.
Mrs. Cliff, in a costume quite simple, but as rich as her conscience would allow, felt within herself all the uplifting influence of her wealth, as she stepped forward to salute this lady who had always been so uplifted by her wealth.
In the course of the conversation, the yacht was mentioned. The visitor would not go away without being authoritatively informed upon this subject.
"Oh yes," said Mrs. Cliff, promptly, "I shall have a yacht next summer. Mr. Burke will select one for me, and I know it will be a good one, for he thoroughly understands such matters."[Pg 150]
Before she left, Mrs. Buskirk invited Mrs. Cliff, the Misses Thorpedyke, and Miss Croup to take luncheon with her quite informally on the following Tuesday. She would have made it a dinner, but in that case her husband would have been at home, and it would have been necessary to invite Mr. Burke, and she was not yet quite sure about Mr. Burke.
This invitation, which soon became known throughout the town, decided the position of Mrs. Cliff at Plainton. When that lady and her family had gone, with her carriage and pair, to the mansion of the Buskirks on the hill, and had there partaken of luncheon, very informally, in company with three of the most distinguished ladies of Harrington, who had also been invited very informally; and when the news of the magnificent repast which had been served on the occasion, with flowers from the greenhouse nearly covering the table, with everything tied up with ribbons which could possibly be so decorated, and with a present for each guest ingeniously concealed under her napkin, floated down into the town, there was no woman in that place who could put her hand upon her heart and honestly declare that hereafter Mrs. Cliff could look up to anybody in Plainton.
This recognition, which soon became obvious to Mrs. Cliff, was a source of genuine gratification to that good lady. She had never been inclined to put herself above her neighbors on account of her fortune, and would have been extremely grieved if she had been convinced that her wealth would oblige her to assume a superior position[Pg 151] but when that wealth gradually and easily, without creating any disturbance or commotion in her circle, raised her of itself, without any action on her part, to the peak of social eminence in her native place, her genuine satisfaction was not interfered with in the least degree by her conscience. Her position had come to her, and she had assumed it as if she had been born to it.
But whenever she thought of her pre?minence,—and she did not think of it nearly so often as other people thought of it,—she determined that it should make no difference to her; and when next she gave a high tea,—not the grand repast to which she intended to invite the Buskirks on the hill,—she invited Miss Cushing. Now, there were people in Plainton who did not invite the dressmaker to their table, but Mrs. Cliff had asked her when they were all poor together, and she would have her now again when they were not all poor together.
As the winter went on, Burke became more and more interested in Mrs. Cliff\'s yacht, and if he had not had this subject to talk about, and plan about, and to go at all hours to see Mrs. Cliff about, it is likely that he would have been absolutely obliged to leave Plainton for want of occupation. But the idea of commanding a steam yacht was attraction enough to keep him ............