Annie Kilburn by W. D. Howells

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She was taking in the humility of the house and its belongings while she
received the impression of an unimagined simplicity in its life from his
easy explanations. The furniture was in green terry, the carpet a harsh,
brilliant tapestry; on the marble-topped centre table was a big clasp Bible
and a basket with a stereoscope and views; the marbleised iron shelf above
the stove-pipe hole supported two glass vases and a French clock under a
glass bell; through the open door, across the oil-cloth of the hallway, she
saw the white-painted pine balusters of the steep, cramped stairs. It was
clear that neither Putney nor his wife had been touched by the aesthetic
craze; the parlour was in the tastelessness of fifteen years before; but
after the decoration of South Hatboro', she found a delicious repose in
it. Her eyes dwelt with relief on the wall-paper of French grey, sprigged
with small gilt flowers, and broken by a few cold engravings and framed
photographs.

Putney himself was as little decorated as the parlour. He had put on a
clean shirt, but the bulging bosom had broken away from its single button,
and showed two serrated edges of ragged linen; his collar lost itself from
time to time under the rise of his plastron scarf band, which kept escaping
from the stud that ought to have held it down behind. His hair was brushed
smoothly across a forehead which looked as innocent and gentle as the
little boy's.

"We don't often give these festivities," he went on, "but you don't come
home once in twelve years every day, Annie. I can't tell you how glad I am
to see you in our house; and Ellen's just as excited as the rest of us; she
was sorry to miss you when she called."

"You're very kind, Ralph. I can't tell _you_ what a pleasure it was to
come, and I'm not going to let the trouble I'm giving spoil my pleasure."

"Well, that's right," said Putney. "_We_ sha'n't either." He took out
a cigar and put it into his mouth. "It's only a dry smoke. Ellen makes
me let up on my chewing when we have company, and I must have something
in my mouth, so I get a cigar. It's a sort of compromise. I'm a terribly
nervous man, Annie; you can't imagine. If it wasn't for the grace of God,
I think I should fly to pieces sometimes. But I guess that's what holds me
together--that and Winthy here. I dropped him on the stairs out there, when
I was drunk, one night. I saw you looking at them; I suppose you've been
told; it's all right. I presume the Almighty knows what He's about; but
sometimes He appears to save at the spigot and waste at the bung-hole, like
the rest of us. He let me cripple my boy to reform me."

"Don't, Ralph!" said Annie, with a voice of low entreaty. She turned and
spoke to the child, and asked him if he would not come to see her.

"What?" he asked, breaking with a sort of absent-minded start from his
intentness upon his father's words.

She repeated her invitation.

"Thanks!" he said, in the prompt, clear little pipe which startles by
its distinctness and decision on the lips of crippled children. "I guess
father'll bring me some day. Don't you want I should go out and tell mother
she's here?" he asked his father.

"Well, if you want to, Winthrop," said his father.

The boy swung himself lightly out of the room on his crutches, and his
father turned to her. "Well, how does Hatboro' strike you, anyway, Annie?
You needn't mind being honest with me, you know."

He did not give her a chance to say, and she was willing to let him talk
on, and tell her what he thought of Hatboro' himself. "Well, it's like
every other place in the world, at every moment of history--it's in a
transition state. The theory is, you know, that most places are at a
standstill the greatest part of the time; they haven't begun to move, or
they've stopped moving; but I guess that's a mistake; they're moving all
the while. I suppose Rome itself was in a transition state when you left?"

"Oh, very decidedly. It had ceased to be old and was becoming new."

"Well, that's just the way with Hatboro'. There is no old Hatboro' any
more; and there never was, as your father and mine could tell us if they
were here. They lived in a painfully transitional period, poor old fellows!
But, for all that, there is a difference. They lived in what was really a
New England village, and we live now in a sprawling American town; and by
American of course I mean a town where at least one-third of the people
are raw foreigners or rawly extracted natives. The old New England ideal
characterises them all, up to a certain point, socially; it puts a decent
outside on most of 'em; it makes 'em keep Sunday, and drink on the sly.
We got in the Irish long ago, and now they're part of the conservative
element. We got in the French Canadians, and some of them are our best
mechanics and citizens. We're getting in the Italians, and as soon as they
want something better than bread and vinegar to eat, they'll begin going to
Congress and boycotting and striking and forming pools and trusts just like
any other class of law-abiding Americans. There used to be some talk of the
Chinese, but I guess they've pretty much blown over. We've got Ah Lee and
Sam Lung here, just as they have everywhere, but their laundries don't seem
to increase. The Irish are spreading out into the country and scooping in
the farms that are not picturesque enough for the summer folks. You can buy
a farm anywhere round Hatboro' for less than the buildings on it cost. I'd
rather the Irish would have the land than the summer folks. They make an
honest living off it, and the other fellows that come out to roost here
from June till October simply keep somebody else from making a living
off it, and corrupt all the poor people in sight by their idleness and
luxury. That's what I tell 'em at South Hatboro'. They don't like it, but
I guess they believe it; anyhow they have to hear it. They'll tell you in
self-defence that J. Milton Northwick is a practical farmer, and sells his
butter for a dollar a pound. He's done more than anybody else to improve
the breeds of cattle and horses; and he spends fifteen thousand a year on
his place. It can't return him five; and that's the reason he's a curse and
a fraud."

"Who _is_ Mr. Northwick, Ralph?" Annie interposed. "Everybody at South
Hatboro' asked me if I'd met the Northwicks."

"He's a very great and good man," said Putney. "He's worth a million, and
he runs a big manufacturing company at Ponkwasset Falls, and he owns a
fancy farm just beyond South Hatboro'. He lives in Boston, but he comes out
here early enough to dodge his tax there, and let poorer people pay it.
He's got miles of cut stone wall round his place, and conservatories and
gardens and villas and drives inside of it, and he keeps up the town roads
outside at his own expense. Yes, we feel it such an honour and advantage to
have J. Milton in Hatboro' that our assessors practically allow him to fix
the amount of tax here himself. People who can pay only a little at the
highest valuation are assessed to the last dollar of their property and
income; but the assessors know that this wouldn't do with Mr. Northwick.
They make a guess at his income, and he always pays their bills without
asking for abatement; they think themselves wise and public-spirited men
for doing it, and most of their fellow-citizens think so too. You see it's
not only difficult for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven, Annie,
but he makes it hard for other people.

"Well, as I was saying, socially, the old New England element is at the top
of the heap here. That's so everywhere. The people that are on the ground
first, it don't matter much who they are, have to manage pretty badly not
to leave their descendants in social ascendency over all newer comers for
ever. Why, I can see it in my own case. I can see that I was a sort of
fetich to the bedevilled fancy of the people here when I was seen drunk in
the streets every day, just because I was one of the old Hatboro' Putneys;
and when I began to hold up, there wasn't a man in the community that
wasn't proud and flattered to help me. Curious, isn't it? It made me sick
of myself and ashamed of them, and I just made up my mind, as soon as I got
straight again, I'd give all my help to the men that hadn't a tradition.
That's what I've done, Annie. There isn't any low, friendless rapscallion
in this town that hasn't got me for his friend--and Ellen. We've been in
all the strikes with the men, and all their fool boycottings and kicking
over the traces generally. Anybody else would have been turned out of
respectable society for one-half that I've done, but it tolerates me
because I'm one of the old Hatboro' Putneys. You're one of the old Hatboro'
Kilburns, and if you want to have a mind of your own and a heart of your
own, all you've got to do is to have it. They'll like it; they'll think
it's original. That's the reason South Hatboro' got after you with that
Social Union scheme. They were right in thinking you would have a great
deal of influence. I was sorry you had to throw it against Brother Peck."

Annie felt herself jump at this climax, as if she had been touched on
an exposed nerve. She grew red, and tried to be angry, but she was only
ashamed and tempted to lie out of the part she had taken. "Mrs. Munger,"
she said, "gave that a very unfair turn. I didn't mean to ridicule Mr.
Peck. I think he was perfectly sincere. The scheme of the invited dance and
supper has been entirely given up. And I don't care for the project of the
Social Union at all."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," said Putney, indifferently, and he resumed his
analysis of Hatboro'--

"We've got all the modern improvements here, Annie. I suppose you'd
find the modern improvements, most of 'em, in Sheol: electric light,
Bell telephone, asphalt sidewalks, and city water--though I don't know
about the water; and I presume they haven't got a public library or an
opera-house--perhaps they _have_ got an opera-house in Sheol: you see
I use the Revised Version, it don't sound so much like swearing. But, as
I was saying--"

Mrs. Putney came in, and he stopped with the laugh of a man who knows that
his wife will find it necessary to account for him and apologise for him.

The ladies kissed each other. Mrs. Putney was dressed in the black silk of
a woman who has one silk; she was red from the kitchen, but all was neat
and orderly in the hasty toilet which she must have made since leaving the
cook-stove. A faint, mixed perfume of violet sachet and fricasseed chicken
attended her.

"Well, as you were saying, Ralph?" she suggested.

"Oh, I was just tracing a little parallel between Hatboro' and Sheol,"
replied her husband.

Mrs. Putney made a _tchk_ of humorous patience, and laughed toward
Annie for sympathy. "Well, then, I guess you needn't go on. Tea's ready.
Shall we wait for the doctor?"

"No; doctors are too uncertain. We'll wait for him while we're eating.
That's what fetches him the soonest. I'm hungry. Ain't you, Win?"

"Not so very," said the boy, with his queer promptness. He stood resting
himself on his crutches at the door, and he now wheeled about, and led the
way out to the living-room, swinging himself actively forward. It seemed
that his haste was to get to the dumb-waiter in the little china closet
opening off the dining-room, which was like the papered inside of a square
box. He called to the girl below, and helped pull it up, as Annie could
tell by the creaking of the rope, and the light jar of the finally arriving
crockery. A half-grown girl then appeared, and put the dishes on at the
places indicated with nods and looks by Mrs. Putney, who had taken her
place at the table. There was a platter of stewed fowl, and a plate of
high-piled waffles, sweltering in successive courses of butter and sugar.
In cut-glass dishes, one at each end of the table, there were canned
cherries and pine-apple. There was a square of old-fashioned soda biscuit,
not broken apart, which sent up a pleasant smell; in the centre of the
table was a shallow vase of strawberries.

It was all very good and appetising; but to Annie it was pathetically
old-fashioned, and helped her to realise how wholly out of the world was
the life which her friends led.

"Winthrop," said Putney, and the father and mother bowed their heads.

The boy dropped his over his folded hands, and piped up clearly: "Our
Father, which art in heaven, help us to remember those who have nothing to
eat. Amen!"

"That's a grace that Win got up himself," his father explained, beginning
to heap a plate with chicken and mashed potato, which he then handed to
Annie, passing her the biscuit and the butter. "We think it suits the
Almighty about as well as anything."

"I suppose you know Ralph of old, Annie?" said Mrs. Putney. "The only way
he keeps within bounds at all is by letting himself perfectly loose."

Putney laughed out his acquiescence, and they began to talk together about
old times. Mrs. Putney and Annie recalled the childish plays and adventures
they had together, and one dreadful quarrel. Putney told of the first time
he saw Annie, when his father took him one day for a call on the old judge,
and how the old judge put him through his paces in American history, and
would not admit the theory that the battle of Bunker's Hill could have been
fought on Breed's Hill. Putney said that it was years before it occurred to
him that the judge must have been joking: he had always thought he was
simply ignorant.

"I used to set a good deal by the battle of Bunker's Hill," he continued.
"I thought the whole Revolution and subsequent history revolved round it,
and that it gave us all liberty, equality, and fraternity at a clip. But
the Lord always finds some odd jobs to look after next day, and I guess He
didn't clear 'em all up at Bunker's Hill."

Putney's irony and piety were very much of a piece apparently, and Annie
was not quite sure which this conclusion was. She glanced at his wife, who
seemed satisfied with it in either case. She was waiting patiently for
him to wake up to the fact that he had not yet given her anything to eat;
after helping Annie and the boy, he helped himself, and pending his wife's
pre-occupation with the tea, he forgot her.

"Why didn't you throw something at me," he roared, in grief and
self-reproach. "There wouldn't have been a loose piece of crockery on this
side of the table if I hadn't got my tea in time."

"Oh, I was listening to Annie's share in the conversation," said Mrs.
Putney; and her husband was about to say something in retort of her thrust
when a tap on the front door was heard.

"Come in, come in, Doc!" he shouted. "Mrs. Putney's just been helped, and
the tea is going to begin."

Dr. Morrell's chuckle made answer for him, and after time enough to put
down his hat, he came in, rubbing his hands and smiling, and making short
nods round the table. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Putney? How d'ye do, Miss Kilburn?
Winthrop?" He passed his hand over the boy's smooth hair and slipped into
the chair beside him.

"You see, the reason why we always wait for the doctor in this formal way,"
said Putney, "is that he isn't in here more than seven nights of the week,
and he rather stands on his dignity. Hand round the doctor's plate, my
son," he added to the boy, and he took it from Annie, to whom the boy gave
it, and began to heap it from the various dishes. "Think you can lift that
much back to the doctor, Win?"

"I guess so," said the boy coolly.

"What is flooring Win at present," said his father, "and getting him down
and rolling him over, is that problem of the robin that eats half a pint of
grasshoppers and then doesn't weigh a bit more than he did before."

"When he gets a little older," said the doctor, shaking over his plateful,
"he'll be interested to trace the processes of his father's thought from a
guest and half a peck of stewed chicken, to a robin and half a pint of--"

"Don't, doctor!" pleaded Mrs. Putney. "He won't have the least trouble if
he'll keep to the surface."

Putney laughed impartially, and said: "Well, we'll take the doctor out and
weigh him when he gets done. We expected Brother Peck here this evening,"
he explained to Dr. Morrell. "You're our sober second thought--Well,"
he broke off, looking across the table at his wife with mock anxiety.
"Anything wrong about that, Ellen?"

"Not as far as I'm concerned, Mrs. Putney," interposed the doctor. "I'm
glad to be here on any terms. Go on, Putney."

"Oh, there isn't anything more. You know how Miss Kilburn here has been
round throwing ridicule on Brother Peck, because he wants the shop-hands
treated with common decency, and my idea was to get the two together and
see how she would feel."

Dr. Morrell laughed at this with what Annie thought was unnecessary malice;
but he stopped suddenly, after a glance at her, and Putney went on--

"Brother Peck pleaded another engagement. Said he had to go off into
the country to see a sick woman that wasn't expected to live. You don't
remember the Merrifields, do you, Annie? Well, it doesn't matter. One of
'em married West, and her husband left her, and she came home here and
got a divorce; I got it for her. She's the one. As a consumptive, she had
superior attractions for Brother Peck. It isn't a case that admits of
jealousy exactly, but it wouldn't matter to Brother Peck anyway. If he saw
a chance to do a good action, he'd wade through blood."

"Now look here, Ralph," said Mrs. Putney, "there's such a thing as letting
yourself _too_ loose."

"Well, _gore_, then," said Putney, buttering himself a biscuit.

The boy, who had kept quiet till now, seemed reached by this last touch,
and broke into a high, crowing laugh, in which they all joined except his
father.

"Gore suits Winthy, anyway," he said, beginning to eat his biscuit. "I met
one of the deacons from Brother Peck's last parish, in Boston, yesterday.
He asked me if we considered Brother Peck anyways peculiar in Hatboro', and
when I said we thought he was a little too luxurious, the deacon came out
with a lot of things. The way Brother Peck behaved toward the needy in that
last parish of his made it simply uninhabitable to the standard Christian.
They had to get rid of him somehow--send him away or kill him. Of course
the deacon said they didn't want to _kill_ him."

"Where was his last parish?" asked the doctor.

"Down on the Maine coast somewhere. Penobscotport, I believe."

"And was he indigenous there?"

"No, I believe not; he's from Massachusetts. Farm-boy and then mill-hand,
I understand. Self-helped to an education; divinity student with summer
intervals of waiting at table in the mountain hotels probably. Drifted down
Maine way on his first call and stuck; but I guess he won't stick here
very long. Annie's friend Mr. Gerrish is going to look after Brother Peck
before a great while." He laughed, to see her blush, and went on. "You see,
Brother Gerrish has got a high ideal of what a Christian minister ought to
be; he hasn't said much about it, but I can see that Brother Peck doesn't
come up to it. Well, Brother Gerrish has got a good many ideals. He likes
to get anybody he can by the throat, and squeeze the difference of opinion
out of 'em."

"There, now, Ralph," his wife interposed, "you let Mr. Gerrish alone.
_You_ don't like people to differ with you, either. Is your cup out,
doctor?"

"Thank you," said the doctor, handing it up to her. "And you mean Mr.
Gerrish doesn't like Mr. Peck's doctrine?" he asked of Putney.

"Oh, I don't know that he objects to his doctrine; he can't very well; it's
'between the leds of the Bible,' as the Hard-shell Baptist said. But he
objects to Brother Peck's walk and conversation. He thinks he walks too
much with the poor, and converses too much with the lowly. He says he
thinks that the pew-owners in Mr. Peck's church and the people who pay his
salary have some rights to his company that he's bound to respect."

The doctor relished the irony, but he asked, "Isn't there something to say
on that side?"

"Oh yes, a good deal. There's always something to say on both sides, even
when one's a wrong side. That's what makes it all so tiresome--makes you
wish you were dead." He looked up, and caught his boy's eye fixed with
melancholy intensity upon him. "I hope you'll never look at both sides when
you grow up, Win. It's mighty uncomfortable. You take the right side, and
stick to that. Brother Gerrish," he resumed, to the doctor, "goes round
taking the credit of Brother Peck's call here; but the fact is he opposed
it. He didn't like his being so indifferent about the salary. Brother
Gerrish held that the labourer was worthy of his hire, and if he didn't
inquire what his wages were going to be, it was a pretty good sign that he
wasn't going to earn them."

"Well, there was some logic in that," said the doctor, smiling as before.

"Plenty. And now it worries Brother Gerrish to see Brother Peck going round
in the same old suit of clothes he came here in, and dressing his child
like a shabby little Irish girl. He says that he who provideth not for
those of his own household is worse than a heathen. That's perfectly true.
And he would like to know what Brother Peck does with his money, anyway. He
would like to insinuate that he loses it at poker, I guess; at any rate, he
can't find out whom he gives it to, and he certainly doesn't spend it on
himself."

"From your account of Mr. Peck." said the doctor, "I should think Brother
Gerrish might safely object to him as a certain kind of sentimentalist."

"Well, yes, he might, looking at him from the outside. But when you come
to talk with Brother Peck, you find yourself sort of frozen out with a
most unexpected, hard-headed cold-bloodedness. Brother Peck is plain
common-sense itself. He seems to be a man without an illusion, without an
emotion."

"Oh, not so bad as that!" laughed the doctor.

"Ask Miss Kilburn. She's talked with him, and she hates him."

"No, I don't, Ralph," Annie began.

"Oh, well, then, perhaps he only made you hate yourself," said Putney.
There was something charming in his mockery, like the teasing of a brother
with a sister; and Annie did not find the atonement to which he brought her
altogether painful. It seemed to her really that she was getting off pretty
easily, and she laughed with hearty consent at last.

Winthrop asked solemnly, "How did he do that?"

"Oh, I can't tell exactly, Winthrop," she said, touched by the boy's simple
interest in this abstruse point. "He made me feel that I had been rather
mean and cruel when I thought I had only been practical. I can't explain;
but it wasn't a comfortable feeling, my dear."

"I guess that's the trouble with Brother Peck," said Putney. "He doesn't
make you feel comfortable. He doesn't flatter you up worth a cent.
There was Annie expecting him to take the most fervent interest in her
theatricals, and her Social Union, and coo round, and tell her what a noble
woman she was, and beg her to consider her health, and not overwork herself
in doing good; but instead of that he simply showed her that she was a
moral Cave-Dweller, and that she was living in a Stone Age of social
brutalities; and of course she hated him."

"Yes, that was the way, Winthrop," said Annie; and they all laughed with
her.

"Now you take them into the parlour, Ralph," said his wife, rising, "and
tell them how he made _you_ hate him."

"I shouldn't like anything better," replied Putney. He lifted the large
ugly kerosene lamp that had been set on the table when it grew dark during
tea, and carried it into the parlour with him. His wife remained to speak
with her little helper, but she sent Annie with the gentlemen.

"Why, there isn't a great deal of it--more spirit than letter, so to
speak," said Putney, when he put down the lamp in the parlour. "You know
how I like to go on about other people's sins, and the world's wickedness
generally; but one day Brother Peck, in that cool, impersonal way of his,
suggested that it was not a wholly meritorious thing to hate evil. He went
so far as to say that perhaps we could not love them that despitefully used
us if we hated their evil so furiously. He said it was a good deal more
desirable to understand evil than to hate it, for then we could begin to
cure it. Yes, Brother Peck let in a good deal of light on me. He rather
insinuated that I must be possessed by the very evils I hated, and that was
the reason I was so violent about them. I had always supposed that I hated
other people's cruelty because I was merciful, and their meanness because
I was magnanimous, and their intolerance because I was generous, and
their conceit because I was modest, and their selfishness because I was
disinterested; but after listening to Brother Peck a while I came to the
conclusion that I hated these things in others because I was cruel myself,
and mean, and bigoted, and conceited, and piggish; and that's why I've
hated Brother Peck ever since--just like you, Annie. But he didn't reform
me, I'm thankful to say, any more than he did you. I've gone on just
the same, and I suppose I hate more infernal scoundrels and loathe more
infernal idiots to-day than ever; but I perceive that I'm no part of the
power that makes for righteousness as long as I work that racket; and now
I sin with light and knowledge, anyway. No, Annie," he went on, "I can
understand why Brother Peck is not the success with women, and feminine
temperaments like me, that his virtues entitle him to be. What we feminine
temperaments want is a prophet, and Brother Peck doesn't prophesy worth
a cent. He doesn't pretend to be authorised in any sort of way; he has a
sneaking style of being no better than you are, and of being rather stumped
by some of the truths he finds out. No, women like a good prophet about
as well as they do a good doctor. Now if you, if you could unite the two
functions, Doc--"

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