CHAPTER XVI
MR. BURKE MAKES A CALL
Mrs. Cliff now began her life as a rich woman. The Thorpedykes were established in the new building; her carriage and horses, with a coachman in plain livery, were seen upon the streets of Plainton; she gave dinners and teas, and subscribed in a modestly open way to appropriate charities; she extended suitable aid to the members of Mrs. Ferguson's family, both living and departed; and the fact that she was willing to help in church work was made very plain by a remark of Miss Shott, who, upon a certain Sunday morning at the conclusion of services, happened to stop in front of Mrs. Cliff, who was going out of the church.
"Oh," said Miss Shott, suddenly stepping very much to one side, "I wouldn't have got in your way if I'd remembered that it was you who pays the new choir!"
Mr. Burke established himself in the Thorpedyke house, which he immediately repaired from top to bottom; but although he frequently repeated to himself and to his acquaintances that he had now set up housekeeping in just the way that he had always wished for, with plenty of servants to do everything just as he wanted it done, he was not happy nevertheless. He felt the loss of the stirring occupation which had so delighted him, and his active mind continually looked right and left for something to do.
He spoke with Mrs. Cliff in regard to the propriety of proposing to the Thorpedykes that he should build an addition to their house, declaring that such an addition would make the old mansion ever so much more valuable, and as to the cost, he would arrange that so that they would never feel the payment of it. But this suggestion met with no encouragement, and poor Burke was so hard put to it for something to occupy his mind that one day he asked Mrs. Cliff if she had entirely given up her idea of employing some of her fortune for the benefit of the native Peruvians, stating that if she wanted an agent to go down there and to attend to that sort of thing, he believed he would be glad to go himself.
But Mrs. Cliff did not intend to send anything to the native Peruvians. According to the arrangements that Captain Horn had made for their benefit they would have as large a share of the Incas' gold as they could possibly claim, and, therefore, she did not feel herself called upon to do anything. "If we had kept it all," she said, "that would have been a different thing!"
In fact, Mrs. Cliff's conscience was now in a very easy and satisfied condition. She did not feel that she owed anything to her fellow-beings that she was not giving them, or that she owed anything to herself that she was not giving to herself. The expenses of building and of the improvements to her spacious grounds had been of so much assistance in removing the plethora of her income that she was greatly encouraged. She felt that she now had her fortune under control, and that she herself might be able to manage it for the future. Already she was making her plans for the next year.
Many schemes she had for the worthy disposition of her wealth, and the more she thought of them and planned their details, the less inclined she felt to leave for an hour or two her spacious and sumptuous apartments in the new building and go back to her little former home where she might think of old times and relieve her mind from the weight of the novelty and the richness of her new dining-room and its adjuncts.