Annie Kilburn by W. D. Howells

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She folded her hands at her waist, and stood up very straight, looking
firmly at Mrs. Munger, who made a show of taking a new grip of her senses
as she sank unbidden into a chair.

"Why, what do you mean, Miss Kilburn?"

"It seems to me that I needn't say."

"Why, but you must! You _must_, you know. I can't be _left_ so! I
must know where I _stand_! I must be sure of my _ground_! I can't
go on without understanding just how much you mean by my being mistaken."

She looked Annie in the face with eyes superficially expressive of
indignant surprise, and Annie perceived that she wished to restore herself
in her own esteem by browbeating some one else into the affirmation of her
innocence.

"Well, if you must know, Mrs. Munger, I mean that you ought to have
remembered Mr. Putney's infirmity, and that it was cruel to put temptation
in his way. Everybody knows that he can't resist it, and that he is making
such a hard fight to keep out of it. And then, if you press me for an
opinion, I must say that you were not justifiable in asking Mr. Peck to
take part in a social entertainment when we had explicitly dropped that
part of the affair."

Mrs. Munger had not pressed Annie for an opinion on this point at all; but
in their interest in it they both ignored the fact. Mrs. Munger tacitly
admitted her position in retorting, "He needn't have stayed."

"You made him stay--you remember how--and he couldn't have got away without
being rude."

"And you think he wasn't rude to scold me before my guests?"

"He told you the truth. He didn't wish to say anything, but you forced him
to speak, just as you have forced me."

"Forced _you_? Miss Kilburn!"

"Yes. I don't at all agree with Mr. Peck in many things, but he is a good
man, and last night he spoke the truth. I shouldn't be speaking it if I
didn't tell you I thought so."

"Very well, then," said Mrs. Munger, rising.

"After this you can't expect me to have anything to do with the Social
Union; you couldn't _wish_ me to, if that's your opinion of my
character."

"I haven't expressed any opinion of your character, Mrs. Munger, if you'll
remember, please; and as for the Social Union, I shall have nothing further
to do with it myself."

Annie drew herself up a little higher, and silently waited for her visitor
to go.

But Mrs. Munger remained.

"I don't believe Mrs. Putney herself would say what you have said," she
remarked, after an embarrassing moment. "If it were really so I should be
willing to make any reparation--to acknowledge it. Will you go with me to
Mrs. Putney's? I have my phaeton here, and--"

"I shouldn't dream of going to Mrs. Putney's with you."

Mrs. Munger urged, with the effect of invincible argument: "I've been down
in the village, and I've talked to a good many about it--some of them
hadn't heard of it before--and I must say, Miss Kilburn, that people
generally take a very different view of it from what you do. They think
that my hospitality has been shamefully abused. Mr. Gates said he should
think I would have Mr. Putney arrested. But I don't care for all that. What
I wish is to prove to you that I am right; and if I can go with you to call
on Mrs. Putney, I shall not care what any one else says. Will you come?"

"Certainly not," cried Annie.

They both stood a moment, and in this moment Dr. Morrell drove up, and
dropped his hitching-weight beyond Mrs. Munger's phaeton.

As he entered she said: "We will let Dr. Morrell decide. I've been asking
Miss Kilburn to go with me to Mrs. Putney's. I think it would be a graceful
and proper thing for me to do, to express my sympathy and interest, and to
hear what Mrs. Putney really has to say. Don't _you_ think I ought to
go to see her, doctor?"

The doctor laughed. "I can't prescribe in matters of social duty. But what
do you want to see Mrs. Putney for?"

"What for? Why, doctor, on account of Mr. Putney--what took place last
night."

"Yes? What was that?"

"What was _that_? Why, his strange behaviour--his--his intoxication."

"Was he intoxicated? Did you think so?"

"Why, you were there, doctor. Didn't you think so?"

Annie looked at him with as much astonishment as Mrs. Munger.

The doctor laughed again. "You can't always tell when Putney's joking; he's
a great joker. Perhaps he was hoaxing."

"Oh doctor, do you think he _could_ have been?" said Mrs. Munger, with
clasped hands. "It would make me the happiest woman in the world! I'd
forgive him all he's made me suffer. But _you're_ joking _now_,
doctor?"

"You can't tell when people are joking. If I'm not, does it follow that I'm
really intoxicated?"

"Oh, but that's nonsense, Dr. Morrell. That's mere--what do you call
it?--chop logic. But I don't mind it. I grasp at a straw." Mrs. Munger
grasped at a straw of the mind, to show how. "But what _do_ you mean?"

"Well, Mrs. Putney wasn't intoxicated last night, but she's not well this
morning. I'm afraid she couldn't see you."

"Just as you _say_, doctor," cried Mrs. Munger, with mounting
cheerfulness. "I _wish_ I knew just how much you meant, and how
little." She moved closer to the doctor, and bent a look of candid fondness
upon him. "But I know you're trying to mystify me."

She pursued him with questions which he easily parried, smiling and
laughing. At the end she left him to Annie, with adieux that were almost
radiant. "Anyhow, I shall take the benefit of the doubt, and if Mr. Putney
was hoaxing, I shall not give myself away. _Do_ find out what he
means, Miss Kilburn, won't you?" She took hold of Annie's unoffered hand,
and pressed it in a double leathern grasp, and ran out of the room with a
lightness of spirit which her physical bulk imperfectly expressed.

XX.

"Well?" said Annie, to the change which came over Morrell's face when Mrs.
Munger was gone.

"Oh, it's a miserable business! He must go on now to the end of his
debauch. He's got past doing any mischief, I'm thankful to say. But I had
hoped to tide him over a while longer, and now that fool has spoiled
everything. Well!"

Annie's heart warmed to his vexation, and she postponed another emotion.
"Yes, she _is_ a fool. I wish you had qualified the term, doctor."

They looked at each other solemnly, and then laughed. "It won't do for a
physician to swear," said Morrell. "I wish you'd give me a cup of coffee.
I've been up all night."

"With Ralph?"

"With Putney."

"You shall have it instantly; that is, as instantly as Mrs. Bolton can
kindle up a fire and make it." She went out to the kitchen, and gave the
order with an imperiousness which she softened in Dr. Morrell's interest by
explaining rather fully to Mrs. Bolton.

When she came back she wanted to talk seriously, tragically, about Putney.
But the doctor would not. He said that it paid to sit up with Putney, drunk
or sober, and hear him go on. He repeated some things Putney said about Mr.
Peck, about Gerrish, about Mrs. Munger.

"But why did you try to put her off in that way--to make her believe he
wasn't intoxicated?" asked Annie, venting her postponed emotion, which was
of disapproval.

"I don't know. It came into my head. But she knows better."

"It was rather cruel; not that she deserves any mercy. She caught so at the
idea."

"Oh yes, I saw that. She'll humbug herself with it, and you'll see that
before night there'll be two theories of Putney's escapade. I think the
last will be the popular one. It will jump with the general opinion of
Putney's ability to carry anything out. And Mrs. Munger will do all she can
to support it."

Mrs. Bolton brought in the coffee-pot, and Annie hesitated a moment, with
her hand on it, before pouring out a cup.

"I don't like it," she said.

"I know you don't. But you can say that it wasn't Putney who hoaxed Mrs.
Munger, but Dr. Morrell."

"Oh, you didn't either of you hoax her."

"Well, then, there's no harm done."

"I'm not so sure."

"And you won't give me any coffee?"

"Oh yes, I'll give you some _coffee_," said Annie, with a sigh of
baffled scrupulosity that made them both laugh.

He broke out again after he had begun to drink his coffee.

"Well?" she demanded, from her own lapse into silence.

"Oh, nothing! Only Putney. He wants Brother Peck, as he calls him, to unite
all the religious elements of Hatboro' in a church of his own, and send
out missionaries to the heathen of South Hatboro' to preach a practical
Christianity. He makes South Hatboro' stand for all that's worldly and
depraved."

"Poor Ralph! Is that the way he talks?"

"Oh, not all the time. He talks a great many other ways."

"I wonder you can laugh."

"He's been very severe on Brother Peck for neglecting the discipline of
his child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the
community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman.
Putney was very hard upon your sex, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all
the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice."

He looked across the table at her with his merry eyes, whose sweetness
she felt even in her sudden preoccupation with the notion which she now
launched upon him, leaning forward and pushing some books and magazines
aside, as if she wished to have nothing between her need and his response.

"Dr. Morrell, what should you think of my asking Mr. Peck to give me his
little girl?"

"To give you his--"

"Yes. Let me take Idella--keep her--adopt her! I've nothing to do, as you
know very well, and she'd be an occupation; and it would be far better
for her. What Ralph says is true. She's growing up without any sort of
training; and I think if she keeps on she will be mischievous to herself
and every one else."

"Really?" asked the doctor. "Is it so bad as that?"

"Of course not. And of course I don't want Mr. Peck to renounce all claim
to his child; but to let me have her for the present, or indefinitely, and
get her some decent clothes, and trim her hair properly, and give her some
sort of instruction--"

"May I come in?" drawled Mrs. Wilmington's mellow voice, and Annie turned
and saw Lyra peering round the edge of the half-opened library door. "I've
been discreetly hemming and scraping and hammering on the wood-work so as
not to overhear, and I'd have gone away if I hadn't been afraid of being
overheard."

"Oh, come in, Lyra," said Annie; and she hoped that she had kept the spirit
of resignation with which she spoke out of her voice.

Dr. Morrell jumped up with an apparent desire to escape that wounded and
exasperated her. She put out her hand quite haughtily to him and asked,
"Oh, must you go?"

"Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Wilmington? You'd better get Miss Kilburn to give
you a cup of her coffee."

"Oh, I will," said Lyra. She forbore any reference, even by a look, to the
intimate little situation she had disturbed.

Morrell added to Annie: "I like your plan. It 'a the best thing you could
do."

She found she had been keeping his hand, and in the revulsion from wrath to
joy she violently wrung it.

"I'm _so_ glad!" She could not help following him to the door, in the
hope that he would say something more, but he did not, and she could only
repeat her rapturous gratitude in several forms of incoherency.

She ran back to Mrs. Wilmington. "Lyra, what do you think of my taking Mr.
Peck's little girl?"

Mrs. Wilmington never allowed herself to seem surprised at anything; she
was, in fact, surprised at very few things. She had got into the easiest
chair in the room, and she answered from it, with a luxurious interest in
the affair, "Well, you know what people will say, Annie."

"No, I don't. _What_ will they say?"

"That you're after Mr. Peck pretty openly."

Annie turned scarlet. "And when they find I'm _not_?" she demanded
with severity, that had no effect upon Lyra.

"Then they'll say you couldn't get him."

"They may say what they please. What do you think of the plan?"

"I think it would be the greatest blessing for the poor little thing," said
Lyra, with a nearer approach to seriousness than she usually made. "And the
greatest care for you," she added, after a moment.

"I shall not care for the care. I shall be glad of it--thankful for it,"
cried Annie fervidly.

"If you can get it," Lyra suggested.

"I believe I can get it. I believe I can make Mr. Peck see that it's a
duty. I shall ask him to regard it as a charity to me--as a mercy."

"Well, that's a good way to work upon Mr. Peck's feelings," said Lyra
demurely. "Was that the plan that Dr. Morrell approved of so highly?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know but it was some course of treatment. You pressed his hand
so affectionately. I said to myself, Well, Annie's either an enthusiastic
patient, or else--"

"What?" demanded Annie, at the little stop Lyra made.

"Well, you know what people do _say_, Annie."

"What?"

"Why, that you're very much out of health, or--" Lyra made another of her
tantalising stops.

"Or what?"

"Or Dr. Morrell is very much in love."

"Lyra, I can't allow you to say such things to me."

"No; that's what I've kept saying to myself all the time. But you would
have it _out_ of me. _I_ didn't want to say it."

It was impossible to resist Lyra's pretended deprecation. Annie laughed. "I
suppose I can't help people's talking, and I ought to be too old to care."

"You ought, but you're not," said Lyra flatteringly. "Well, Annie, what do
you think of our little evening at Mrs. Munger's in the dim retrospect?
Poor Ralph! What did the doctor say about him?" She listened with so keen
a relish for the report of Putney's sayings that Annie felt as if she had
been turning the affair into comedy for Lyra's amusement. "Oh dear, I wish
I could hear him! I thought I should have died last night when he came
back, and began to scare everybody blue with his highly personal remarks.
I wish he'd had time to get round to the Northwicks."

"Lyra," said Annie, nerving herself to the office; "don't you think it was
wicked to treat that poor girl as you did?"

"Well, I suppose that's the way some people might look at it," said Lyra
dispassionately.

"Then how--_how_ could you do it?"

"Oh, it's easy enough to behave wickedly, Annie, when you feel like it,"
said Lyra, much amused by Annie's fervour, apparently. "Besides, I don't
know that it was so _very_ wicked. What makes you think it was?"

"Oh, it wasn't that merely. Lyra, may I--_may_ I speak to you plainly,
frankly--like a sister?" Annie's heart filled with tenderness for Lyra,
with the wish to help her, to save a person who charmed her so much.

"Well, like a _step_-sister, you may," said Lyra demurely.

"It wasn't for her sake alone that I hated to see it. It was for your
sake--for _his_ sake."

"Well, that's very kind of you, Annie," said Lyra, without the least
resentment. "And I know what you mean. But it really doesn't hurt
either Jack or me. I'm not very goody-goody, Annie; I don't pretend to
be; but I'm not very baddy-baddy either. I assure you"--Lyra laughed
mischievously--"I'm one of the very few persons in Hatboro' who are better
than they should be."

"I know it, Lyra--I know it. But you have no right to keep him from taking
a fancy to some young girl--and marrying her; to keep him to yourself; to
make people talk."

"There's something in that," Lyra assented, with impartiality. "But I don't
think it would be well for Jack to marry yet; and if I see him taking a
fancy to any real nice girl, I sha'n't interfere with him. But I shall be
very _particular_, Annie."

She looked at Annie with such a droll mock earnest, and shook her head with
such a burlesque of grandmotherly solicitude, that Annie laughed in spite
of herself. "Oh, Lyra, Lyra!"

"And as for me," Lyra went on, "I assure you I don't care for the little
bit of harm it does me."

"But you ought--you ought!" cried Annie. "You ought to respect yourself
enough to care. You ought to respect other women enough."

"Oh, I guess I'd let the balance of the sex slide, Annie," said Lyra.

"No, you mustn't; you can't. We are all bound together; we owe everything
to each other."

"Isn't that rather Peckish?" Lyra suggested.

"I don't know. But it's true, Lyra. And I shouldn't be ashamed of getting
it from Mr. Peck."

"Oh, I didn't say you would be."

"And I hope you won't be hurt with me. I know that it's a most
unwarrantable thing to speak to you about such a matter; but you know why
I do it."

"Yes, I suppose it's because you like me; and I appreciate that, I assure
you, Annie."

Lyra was soberer than she had yet been, and Annie felt that she was really
gaining ground. "And your husband; you ought to respect _him_--"

Lyra laughed out with great relish. "Oh, now, Annie, you _are_ joking!
Why in the _world_ should I respect Mr. Wilmington? An old man like
him marrying a young girl like me!" She jumped up and laughed at the look
in Annie's face. "Will you go round with me to the Putneys? thought Ellen
might like to see us."

"No, no. I can't go," said Annie, finding it impossible to recover at once
from the quite unanswerable blow her sense of decorum--she thought it her
moral sense--had received.

"Well, you'll be glad to have _me_ go, anyway," said Lyra. She saw
Annie shrinking from her, and she took hold of her, and pulled her up and
kissed her. "You dear old thing! I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the
world. And whichever it is, Annie, the parson or the doctor, I wish him
joy."

That afternoon, as Annie was walking to the village, the doctor drove up to
the sidewalk, and stopped near her. "Miss Kilburn, I've got a letter from
home. They write me about my mother in a way that makes me rather anxious,
and I shall run down to Chelsea this evening."

"Oh, I'm sorry for your bad news. I hope it's nothing serious."

"She's old; that's the only cause for anxiety. But of course I must go."

"Oh yes, indeed. I do hope you'll find all right with her."

"Thank you very much. I'm sorry that I must leave Putney at such a time.
But I leave him with Mr. Peck, who's promised to be with him. I thought
you'd like to know."

"Yes, I do; it's very kind of you--very kind indeed."

"Thank you," said the doctor. It was not the phrase exactly, but it served
the purpose of the cordial interest in which they parted as well as
another.

XXI.

During the days that Mr. Peck had consented to leave Idella with her Annie
took the whole charge of the child, and grew into an intimacy with her
that was very sweet. It was not necessary to this that Idella should be
always tractable and docile, which she was not, but only that she should
be affectionate and dependent; Annie found that she even liked her to be
a little baddish; it gave her something to forgive; and she experienced a
perverse pleasure in discovering that the child of a man so self-forgetful
as Mr. Peck was rather more covetous than most children. It also amused her
that when some of Idella's shabby playmates from Over the Track casually
found their way to the woods past Annie's house, and tried to tempt Idella
to go with them, the child disowned them, and ran into the house from
them; so soon was she alienated from her former life by her present social
advantages. She apparently distinguished between Annie and the Boltons, or
if not quite this, she showed a distinct preference for her company, and
for her part of the house. She hung about Annie with a flattering curiosity
and interest in all she did. She lost every trace of shyness with her, but
developed an intense admiration for her in every way--for her dresses, her
rings, her laces, for the elegancies that marked her a gentlewoman. She
pronounced them prettier than Mrs. Warner's things, and the house prettier
and larger.

"Should you like to live with me?" Annie asked.

The child seemed to reflect. Then she said, with the indirection of her age
and sex, pushing against Annie's knee, "I don't know what your name is."

"Have you never heard my name? It's Annie. How do you like it?"

"It's--it's too short," said the child, from her readiness always to answer
something that charmed Annie.

"Well, then you can make it longer. You can call me Aunt Annie. I think
that will be better for a little girl; don't you?"

"Mothers can whip, but aunts can't," said Idella, bringing a practical
knowledge, acquired from her observation of life Over the Track, to a
consideration of the proposed relation.

"I know _one_ aunt who won't," said Annie, touched by the reply.

Saturday evening Idella's father came for her; and with a preamble which
seemed to have been unnecessary when he understood it, Annie asked him to
let her keep the child, at least till he had settled himself in a house of
his own, or, she hinted, in some way more comfortable for Idella than he
was now living. In her anxiety to make him believe that she was not taking
too great a burden on her hands, she became slowly aware that no fear of
this had apparently troubled him, and that he was looking at the whole
matter from a point outside of questions of polite ceremonial, even of
personal feeling.

She was vexed a little with his insensibility to the favour she meant the
child, and she could not help trying to make him realise it. "I don't
promise always to be the best guide, philosopher, and friend that Idella
could have"--she took this light tone because she found herself afraid of
him--"but I think I shall be a little improvement on some of her friends
Over the Track. At least, if she wants my cat, she shall have it without
fighting for it."

Mr. Peck looked up with question, and she went on to tell him of a struggle
which she had seen one day between Idella and a small Irish boy for a
kitten; it really belonged to the boy, but Idella carried it off.

The minister listened attentively. At the end: "Yes," he said, "that lust
of possession is something all but impossible, even with constant care,
to root out of children. I have tried to teach Idella that nothing is
rightfully hers except while she can use it; but it is hard to make her
understand, and when she is with other children she forgets."

Annie could not believe at first that he was serious, and then she was
disposed to laugh. "Really, Mr. Peck," she began, "I can't think it's so
important that a little thing like Idella should be kept from coveting
a kitten as that she should be kept from using naughty words and from
scratching and biting."

"I know," Mr. Peck consented. "That is the usual way of looking at such
things."

"It seems to me," said Annie, "that it's the common-sense way."

"Perhaps. But upon the whole, I don't agree with you. It is bad for the
child to use naughty words and to scratch and bite; that's part of the
warfare in which we all live; but it's worse for her to covet, and to wish
to keep others from having."

"I don't wonder you find it hard to make her understand that."

"Yes, it's hard with all of us. But if it is ever to be easier we must
begin with the children."

He was silent, and Annie did not say anything. She was afraid that she had
not helped her cause. "At least," she finally ventured, "you can't object
to giving Idella a little rest from the fray. Perhaps if she finds that she
can get things without fighting for them, she'll not covet them so much."

"Yes," he said, with a dim smile that left him sad again, "there is some
truth in that. But I'm not sure that I have the right to give her
advantages of any kind, to lift her above the lot, the chance, of the least
fortunate--"

"Surely, we are bound to provide for those of our own household," said
Annie.

"Who are those of our own household?" asked the minister. "All mankind are
those of our own household. These are my mother and my brother and my
sister."

"Yes, I know," said Annie, somewhat eagerly quitting this difficult ground.
"But you can leave her with me at least till you get settled," she
faltered, "if you don't wish it to be for longer."

"Perhaps it may not be for long," he answered, "if you mean my settlement
in Hatboro'. I doubt," he continued, lifting his eyes to the question in
hers, "whether I shall remain here."

"Oh, I hope you will," cried Annie. She thought she must make a pretence of
misunderstanding him. "I supposed you were very much satisfied with your
work here."

"I am not satisfied with myself in my work," replied the minister; "and I
know that I am far from acceptable to many others in it."

"You are acceptable to those who are best able to appreciate you, Mr.
Peck," she protested, "and to people of every kind. I'm sure it's only a
question of time when you will be thoroughly acceptable to all. I want
you to understand, Mr. Peck," she added, "that I was shocked and ashamed
the other night at your being tricked into countenancing a part of the
entertainment you were promised should be dropped. I had nothing to do
with it."

"It was very unimportant, after all," the minister said, "as far as I was
concerned. In fact, I was interested to see the experiment of bringing the
different grades of society together."

"It seems to me it was an utter failure," suggested Annie.

"Quite. But it was what I expected."

There appeared an uncandour in this which Annie could not let pass even if
it imperilled her present object to bring up the matter of past contention.
"But when we first talked of the Social Union you opposed it because it
wouldn't bring the different classes together."

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