Annie Kilburn by W. D. Howells

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"Oh, Lyra was wonderful!" said Annie. "Don't you think so, Ellen?"

"She was Lyra," said Mrs. Putney definitely.

"No; she wasn't Lyra at all!" retorted Annie. "That was the marvel of it.
She was Juliet's nurse."

"Perhaps she was a little of both," suggested Putney. "What did you think
of the performance, Mr. Peck? I don't want a personal tribute, but if you
offer it, I shall not be ungrateful."

"I have been very much interested," said the minister. "It was all very new
to me. I realised for the first time in my life the great power that the
theatre must be. I felt how much the drama could do--how much good."

"Well, that's what we're after," said Putney. "We had no personal motive;
good, right straight along, was our motto. Nobody wanted to outshine
anybody else. I kept my Mercutio down all through, so's not to get ahead
of Romeo or Tybalt in the public esteem. Did our friends outside the rope
catch on to my idea?" Mr. Peck smiled at the banter, but he seemed not to
know just what to say, and Putney went on: "That's why I made it so bad. I
didn't want anybody to go home feeling sorry that Mercutio was killed. I
don't suppose Winthrop could have slept."

"You won't sleep yourself to-night, I'm afraid," said his wife.

"Oh, Mrs. Munger has promised me a particularly weak cup of coffee. She has
got us all in, it seems, for a sort of supper, in spite of everything. I
understand it includes representatives of all the stations and conditions
present except the outcasts beyond the rope. I don't see what you're doing
here, Mr. Peck."

"Was Mr. Peck really outside the rope?" Annie asked Dr. Morrell, as they
dropped apart from the others a little.

"I believe he gave his chair to one of the women from the outside," said
the doctor.

Annie moved with him toward Lyra, who was joking with some of the hands.

With all her good-nature, she had the effect of patronising them, as she
stood talking about the play with them in her drawl, which she had got
back to again. They were admiring her, in her dress of the querulous old
nurse, and told her how they never would have known her. But there was an
insincerity in the effusion of some of the more nervous women, and in the
reticence of the others, who were holding back out of self-respect.

She met Annie and Morrell with eager relief. "Well, Annie?"

"Perfect!"

"Well, now, that's very nice; you can't go beyond perfect, you know. I
_did_ do it pretty well, didn't I? Poor Mr. Brandreth! Have you seen
him? You must say something comforting to him. He's really been sacrificed
in this business. You know he wanted Miss Chapley. She would have made a
lovely Juliet. Of course she blames him for it. She thinks he wanted to
make up to Miss Northwick, when Miss Northwick was just flinging herself at
Jack. Look at her!"

Jack Wilmington and Miss Sue Northwick were standing together near her
father and a party of her friends, and she was smiling and talking at
him. Eyes, lips, gestures, attitude expressed in the proud girl a fawning
eagerness to please the man, who received her homage rather as if it bored
him. His indifferent manner may have been one secret of his power over her,
and perhaps she was not capable of all the suffering she was capable of
inflicting.

Lyra turned to walk toward the house, deflecting a little in the direction
of her nephew and Miss Northwick. "Jack!" she drawled over the shoulder
next them as she passed, "I wish you'd bring your aunty's wrap to her on
the piazza."

"Why, stay here!" Putney called after her. "They're going to fetch the
refreshments out here."

"Yes, but I'm tired, Ralph, and I can't sit on the grass, at my age."

She moved on, with her sweeping, lounging pace, and Jack Wilmington, after
a moment's hesitation, bowed to Miss Northwick and went after her.

The girl remained apart from her friends, as if expecting his return.

Silhouetted against the bright windows, Lyra waited till Jack Wilmington
reappeared with a shawl and laid it on her shoulders. Then she sank into
a chair. The young man stood beside her talking down upon her. Something
restive and insistent expressed itself in their respective attitudes. He
sat down at her side.

Miss Northwick joined her friends carelessly.

"Ah, Miss Kilburn," said Mr. Brandreth's voice at Annie's ear, "I'm glad
to find you. I've just run home with mother--she feels the night air--and
I was afraid you would slip through our fingers before I got back. This
little business of the refreshments was an afterthought of Mrs. Munger's,
and we meant it for a surprise--we knew you'd approve of it in the form it
took." He looked round at the straggling workpeople, who represented the
harmonisation of classes, keeping to themselves as if they had been there
alone.

"Yes," Annie was obliged to say; "it's very pleasant." She added: "You must
all be rather hungry, Mr. Brandreth. If the Social Union ever gets on its
feet, it will have _you_ to thank more than any one."

"Oh, don't speak of me, Miss Kilburn! Do you know, we've netted about two
hundred dollars. Isn't that pretty good, doctor?"

"Very," said the doctor. "Hadn't we better follow Mrs. Wilmington's
example, and get up under the piazza roof? I'm afraid you'll be the worse
for the night air, Miss Kilburn. Putney," he called to his friend, "we're
going up to the house."

"All right. I guess that's a good idea."

The doctor called to the different knots and groups, telling them to come
up to the house. Some of the workpeople slipped away through the grounds
and did not come. The Northwicks and their friends moved toward the house.

Mrs. Munger came down the lawn to meet her guests. "Ah, that's right. It's
much better indoors. I was just coming for you." She addressed herself more
particularly to the Northwicks. "Coffee will be ready in a few moments.
We've met with a little delay."

"I'm afraid we must say good night at once," said Mr. Northwick. "We had
arranged to have our friends and some other guests with us at home. And
we're quite late now."

Mrs. Munger protested. "Take our Juliet from us! Oh, Miss Northwick, how
can I thank you enough? The whole play turned upon you!"

"It's just as well," she said to Annie, as the Northwicks and their friends
walked across the lawn to the gate, where they had carriages waiting.
"They'd have been difficult to manage, and everybody else will feel a
little more at home without them. Poor Mr. Brandreth, I'm sure _you_
will! I did pity you so, with such a Juliet on your hands!"

In-doors the representatives of the lower classes were less at ease than
they were without. Some of the ministers mingled with them, and tried to
form a bond between them and the other villagers. Mr. Peck took no part in
this work; he stood holding his elbows with his hands, and talking with a
perfunctory air to an old lady of his congregation.

The young ladies of South Hatboro', as Mrs. Munger's assistants, went about
impartially to high and low with trays of refreshments. Annie saw Putney,
where he stood with his wife and boy, refuse coffee, and she watched him
anxiously when the claret-cup came. He waved his hand over it, and said,
"No; I'll take some of the lemonade." As he lifted a glass of it toward his
lips he stopped and made as if to put it down again, and his hand shook so
that he spilled some of it. Then he dashed it off, and reached for another
glass. "I want some more," he said, with a laugh; "I'm thirsty." He drank a
second glass, and when he saw a tray coming toward Annie, where Dr. Morrell
had joined her, he came over and exchanged his empty glass for a full one.

"Not much to brag of as lemonade," he said, "but first-rate rum punch."

"Look here, Putney," whispered the doctor, laying his hand on his arm,
"don't you take any more of that. Give me that glass!"

"Oh, all right!" laughed Putney, dashing it off. "You're welcome to the
tumbler, if you want it, Doc."

XVIII.

Mrs. Munger's guests kept on talking and laughing. With the coffee and the
punch there began to be a little more freedom. Some prohibitionists among
the working people went away when they found that the lemonade was punch;
but Mrs. Munger did not know it, and she saw the ideal of a Social Union
figuratively accomplished in her own house. She stirred about among her
guests till she produced a fleeting, empty good-fellowship among them. One
of the shoe-shop hands, with an inextinguishable scent of leather and the
character of a droll, seconded her efforts with noisy jokes. He proposed
games, and would not be snubbed by the refusal of his boss to countenance
him, he had the applause of so many others. Mrs. Munger approved of the
idea.

"Don't you think it would be great fun, Mrs. Gerrish?" she asked.

"Well, now, if Squire Putney would lead off," said the joker, looking
round.

Putney could not be found, nor Dr. Morrell.

"They're off somewhere for a smoke," said Mrs. Munger. "Well, that's right.
I want everybody to feel that my house is their own to-night, and to come
and go just as they like. Do you suppose Mr. Peck is offended?" she asked,
under her breath, as she passed Annie. "He _couldn't_ feel that this
is the same thing; but I can't see him anywhere. He wouldn't go without
taking leave, you don't suppose?"

Annie joined Mrs. Putney. They talked at first with those who came to ask
where Putney and the doctor were; but finally they withdrew into a little
alcove from the parlour, where Mrs. Munger approved of their being when she
discovered them; they must be very tired, and ought to rest on the lounge
there. Her theory of the exhaustion of those who had taken part in the play
embraced their families.

The time wore on toward midnight, and her guests got themselves away with
more or less difficulty as they attempted the formality of leave-taking
or not. Some of the hands who thought this necessary found it a serious
affair; but most of them slipped off without saying good night to Mrs.
Munger or expressing that rapture with the whole evening from beginning
to end which the ladies of South Hatboro' professed. The ladies of South
Hatboro' and Old Hatboro' had met in a general intimacy not approached
before, and they parted with a flow of mutual esteem. The Gerrish children
had dropped asleep in nooks and corners, from which Mr. Gerrish hunted them
up and put them together for departure, while his wife remained with Mrs.
Munger, unable to stop talking, and no longer amenable to the looks with
which he governed her in public.

Lyra came downstairs, hooded and wrapped for departure, with Jack
Wilmington by her side. "Why, _Ellen_!" she said, looking into the
little alcove from the hall. "Are you here yet? And Annie! Where in the
world is Ralph?" At the pleading look with which Mrs. Putney replied, she
exclaimed: "Oh, it's what I was afraid of! I don't see what the woman could
have been about! But of course she didn't think of poor Ralph. Ellen, let
me take you and Winthrop home! Dr. Morrell will be sure to bring Ralph."

"Well," said Mrs. Putney passively, but without rising.

"Annie can come too. There's plenty of room. Jack can walk."

Jack Wilmington joined Lyra in urging Annie to take his place. He said to
her, apart, "Young Munger has been telling me that Putney got at the
sideboard and carried off the rum. I'll stay and help look after him."

A crazy laugh came into the parlour from the piazza outside, and the group
in the alcove started forward. Putney stood at a window, resting one arm
on the bar of the long lower sash, which was raised to its full height,
and looking ironically in upon Mrs. Munger and her remaining guests. He
was still in his Mercutio dress, but he had lost his plumed cap, and was
bareheaded. A pace or two behind him stood Mr. Peck, regarding the effect
of this apparition upon the company with the same dreamy, indrawn presence
he had in the pulpit.

"Well, Mrs. Munger, I'm glad I got back in time to tell you how much I've
enjoyed it. Brother Peck wanted me to go home, but I told him, Not till
I've thanked Mrs. Munger, Brother Peck; not till I've drunk her health in
her own old particular Jamaica." He put to his lips the black bottle which
he had been holding in his right hand behind him; then he took it away,
looked at it, and flung it rolling-along the piazza floor. "Didn't get hold
of the inexhaustible bottle that time; never do. But it's a good article;
a better article than you used to sell on the sly, Bill Gerrish. You'll
excuse my helping myself, Mrs. Munger; I knew you'd want me to. Well, it's
been a great occasion, Mrs. Munger." He winked at the hostess. "You've
had your little invited supper, after all. You're a manager, Mrs. Munger.
You've made even the wrath of Brother Peck to praise you."

The ladies involuntarily shrank backward as Putney suddenly entered through
the window and gained the corner of the piano at a dash. He stayed himself
against it, slightly swaying, and turned his flaming eyes from one to
another, as if questioning whom he should attack next.

Except for the wild look in them, which was not so much wilder than they
wore in all times of excitement, and an occasional halt at a difficult
word, he gave no sign of being drunk. The liquor had as yet merely
intensified him.

Mrs. Munger had the inspiration to treat him as one caresses a dangerous
lunatic. "I'm sure you're very kind, Mr. Putney, to come back. Do sit
down!"

"Why?" demanded Putney. "Everybody else standing."

"That's true," said Mrs. Munger. "I'm sure I don't know why--"

"Oh yes, you do, Mrs. Munger. It's because they want to have a good view of
a man who's made a fool of himself--"

"Oh, now, Mr. _Putney_!" said Mrs. Munger, with hospitable
deprecation. "I'm sure no one wants to do anything of the kind." She looked
round at the company for corroboration, but no one cared to attract
Putney's attention by any sound or sign.

"But I'll tell you what," said Putney, with a savage burst, "that a woman
who puts hell-fire before a poor devil who can't keep out of it when he
sees it, is better worth looking at."

"Mr. Putney, I assure you," said Mrs. Munger, "that it was the
_mildest_ punch! And I really didn't think--I didn't remember--"

She turned toward Mrs. Putney with her explanation, but Putney seemed to
have forgotten her, and he turned upon Mr. Gerrish, "How's that drunkard's
grave getting along that you've dug for your porter?" Gerrish remained
prudently silent. "I know you, Billy. You're all right. You've got the pull
on your conscience; we all have, one way or another. Here's Annie Kilburn,
come back from Rome, where she couldn't seem to fix it up with hers to suit
her, and she's trying to get round it in Hatboro' with good works. Why,
there isn't any occasion for good works in Hatboro'. I could have told you
that before you came," he said, addressing Annie directly. "What we want is
faith, and lots of it. The church is going to pieces because we haven't got
any faith."

His hand slipped from the piano, and he dropped heavily back upon a chair
that stood near. The concussion seemed to complete in his brain the
transition from his normal dispositions to their opposite, which had
already begun. "Bill Gerrish has done more for Hatboro' than any other man
in the place. He's the only man that holds the church together, because he
knows the value of _faith_." He said this without a trace of irony,
glaring at Annie with fierce defiance. "You come back here, and try to set
up for a saint in a town where William B. Gerrish has done--has done more
to establish the dry-goods business on a metro-me-tro-politan basis than
any other man out of New York or Boston."

He stopped and looked round, mystified, as if this were not the point which
he had been aiming at.

Lyra broke into a spluttering laugh, and suddenly checked herself. Putney
smiled slightly. "Pretty good, eh? Say, where was I?" he asked slyly. Lyra
hid her face behind Annie's shoulder. "What's that dress you got on? What's
all this about, anyway? Oh yes, I know. _Romeo and Juliet_--Social
Union. Well," he resumed, with a frown, "there's too much _Romeo and
Juliet_, too much Social Union, in this town already." He stopped, and
seemed preparing to launch some deadly phrase at Mrs. Wilmington, but he
only said, "You're all right, Lyra."

"Mrs. Munger," said Mr. Gerrish, "we must be going. Good night, ma'am. Mrs.
Gerrish, it's time the children were at home."

"Of course it is," said Putney, watching the Gerrishes getting their
children together. He waved his hand after them, and called out, "William
Gerrish, you're a man; I honour you."

He laid hold of the piano and pulled himself to his feet, and seemed to
become aware, for the first time, of his wife, where she stood with their
boy beside her.

"What you doing here with that child at this time of night?" he shouted at
her, all that was left of the man in his eyes changing into the glare of a
pitiless brute. "Why don't you go home? You want to show people what I did
to him? You want to publish my shame, do you? Is that it? Look here!"

He began to work himself along toward her by help of the piano. A step was
heard on the piazza without, and Dr. Morrell entered through the open
window.

"Come now, Putney," he said gently. The other men closed round them.

Putney stopped. "What's this? Interfering in family matters? You better
go home and look after your own wives, if you got any. Get out the way,
'n' you mind your own business, Doc. Morrell. You meddle too much."
His speech was thickening and breaking. "You think science going do
everything--evolution! Talk me about evolution! What's evolution done
for Hatboro'? 'Volved Gerrish's store. One day of Christianity--real
Christianity--Where's that boy? If I get hold of him--"

He lunged forward, and Jack Wilmington and young Munger stepped before him.

Mrs. Putney had not moved, nor lost the look of sad, passive vigilance
which she had worn since her husband reappeared.

She pushed the men aside.

"Ralph, behave yourself! _Here's_ Winthrop, and we want you to take us
home. Come now!" She passed her arm through his, and the boy took his other
hand. The action, so full of fearless custom and wonted affection from them
both, seemed with her words to operate another total change in his mood.

"All right; I'm going, Ellen. Got to say good night Mrs. Munger, that's
all." He managed to get to her, with his wife on his arm and his boy at his
side. "Want to thank you for a pleasant evening, Mrs. Munger--want to thank
you--"

"And _I_ want to thank you _too_, Mrs. Munger," said Mrs. Putney,
with an intensity of bitterness no repetition of the words could give,
"It's been a pleasant evening for _me_!"

Putney wished to stop and explain, but his wife pulled him away.

Dr. Morrell and Annie followed to get them safely into the carriage; he
went with them, and when she came back Mrs. Munger was saying: "I will
leave it to Mr. Wilmington, or any one, if I'm to blame. It had quite gone
out of my head about Mr. Putney. There was plenty of coffee, besides, and
if everything that could harm particular persons had to be kept out of the
way, society couldn't go on. We ought to consider the greatest good of the
greatest number." She looked round from one to another for support. No one
said anything, and Mrs. Munger, trembling on the verge of a collapse, made
a direct appeal: "Don't you think so, Mr. Peck?"

The minister broke his silence with reluctance. "It's sometimes best to
have the effect of error unmistakable. Then we are sure it's error."

Mrs. Munger gave a sob of relief into her handkerchief. "Yes, that's just
what I say."

Lyra bent her face on her arm, and Jack Wilmington put his head out of the
window where he stood.

Mr. Peck remained staring at Mrs. Munger, as if doubtful what to do. Then
he said: "You seem not to have understood me, ma'am. I should be to blame
if I left you in doubt. You have been guilty of forgetting your brother's
weakness, and if the consequence has promptly followed in his shame, it is
for you to realise it. I wish you a good evening."

He went out with a dignity that thrilled Annie. Lyra leaned toward her and
said, choking with laughter, "He's left Idella asleep upstairs. We haven't
_any_ of us got _perfect_ memories, have we?"

"Run after him!" Annie said to Jack Wilmington, in undertone, "and get him
into my carriage. I'll get the little girl. Lyra, _don't_ speak of
it."

"Never!" said Mrs. Wilmington, with delight. "I'm solid for Mr. Peck every
time."

XIX.

Annie made up a bed for Idella on a wide, old-fashioned lounge in her room,
and put her away in it, swathed in a night-gown which she found among
the survivals of her own childish clothing in that old chest of drawers.
When she woke in the morning she looked across at the little creature,
with a tender sense of possession and protection suffusing her troubled
recollections of the night before. Idella stirred, stretched herself with
a long sigh, and then sat up and stared round the strange place as if she
were still in a dream.

"Would you like to come in here with me?" Annie suggested from her bed.

The child pushed back her hair with her little hands, and after waiting to
realise the situation to the limit of her small experience, she said, with
a smile that showed her pretty teeth, "Yes."

"Then come."

Idella tumbled out of bed, pulling up the nightgown, which was too long for
her, and softly thumped across the carpet. Annie leaned over and lifted her
up, and pressed the little face to her own, and felt the play of the quick,
light breath over her cheek.

"Would you like to stay with me--live with me--Idella?" she asked.

The child turned her face away, and hid a roguish smile in the pillow. "I
don't know."

"Would you like to be my little girl?"

"No."

"No? Why not?"

"Because--because"--she seemed to search her mind--"because your
night-gowns are too long."

"Oh, is that all? That's no reason. Think of something else."

Idella rubbed her face hard on the pillow. "You dress up cats."

She lifted her face, and looked with eyes of laughing malice into Annie's,
and Annie pushed her face against Idella's neck and cried, "You're a
rogue!"

The little one screamed with laughter and gurgled: "Oh, you tickle! You
tickle!"

They had a childish romp, prolonged through the details of Idella's washing
and dressing, and Annie tried to lose, in her frolic with the child, the
anxieties that had beset her waking; she succeeded in confusing them with
one another in one dull, indefinite pain.

She wondered when Mr. Peck would come for Idella, but they were still at
their belated breakfast when Mrs. Bolton came in to say that Bolton had met
the minister on his way up, and had asked him if Idella might not stay the
week out with them.

"I don' know but he done more'n he'd ought.

"But she can be with us the rest part, when you've got done with her."

"I haven't begun to get done with her," said Annie. "I'm glad Mr. Bolton
asked."

After breakfast Bolton himself appeared, to ask if Idella might go up to
the orchard with him. Idella ran out of the room and came back with her hat
on, and tugging to get into her shabby little sack. Annie helped her with
it, and Idella tucked her hand into Bolton's loose, hard fist, and gave it
a pull toward the door.

"Well, I don't see but what she's goin'," he said.

"Yes; you'd better ask her the next time if _I_ can go," said Annie.

"Well, why don't you?" asked Bolton, humouring the joke. "I guess you'd
enjoy it about as well as any. We're just goin' for a basket of wind-falls
for pies. I guess we ain't a-goin' to be gone a great while."

Annie watched them up the lane from the library window with a queer grudge
at heart; Bolton stiffly lumbering forward at an angle of forty-five
degrees, the child whirling and dancing at his side, and now before and now
after him.

At the sound of wheels on the gravel before the front door, Annie turned
away with such an imperative need of its being Dr. Morrell's buggy that it
was almost an intolerable disappointment to find it Mrs. Munger's phaeton.

Mrs. Munger burst in upon her in an excitement which somehow had an effect
of premeditation.

"Miss Kilburn, I wish to know what you think of Mr. and Mrs. Putney's
behaviour to me, and Mr. Peck's, in my own house, last night. They are
friends of yours, and I wish to know if you approve of it. I come to
you _as_ their friend, and I am sure you will feel as I do that my
hospitality has been abused. It was an outrage for Mr. Putney to get
intoxicated in my house; and for Mr. Peck to attack me as he did before
everybody, because Mr. Putney had taken advantage of his privileges, was
abominable. I am not a member of his church; and even if I were, he would
have had no right to speak so to me."

Annie felt the blood fly to her head, and she waited a moment to regain her
coolness. "I wonder you came to ask me, Mrs. Munger, if you were so sure
that I agreed with you. I'm certainly Mr. and Mrs. Putney's friend, and
so far as admiring Mr. Peck's sincerity and goodness is concerned, I'm
_his_ friend. But I'm obliged to say that you're mistaken about the
rest."

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