Then she held that people who had nothing else to do ought at least to be exemplary in their lives, and she was merciless to the goings-on in South Hatboro’, which had penetrated on the breath of scandal to the elder village. When Annie came to find out what these were, she did not think them dreadful; they were small flirtations and harmless intimacies between the members of the summer community, which in the imagination of the village blackened into guilty intrigue. On the tongues of some, South Hatboro’ was another Gomorrah; Mrs. Bolton believed the worst, especially of the women.
“I hear,” said Mrs. Bolton, “that them women come up here for rest. I don’t know what they want to rest from; but if it’s from doin’ nothin’ all winter long, I guess they go back to the city poot’ near’s tired’s they come.”
Perhaps Annie felt that it was useless to try to enlighten her in regard to the fatigues from which the summer sojourner in the country escapes so eagerly; the cares of giving and going to lunches and dinners; the labour of afternoon teas; the late hours and the heavy suppers of evening receptions; the drain of charity-doing and play-going; the slavery of amateur art study, and parlour readings, and musicales; the writing of invitations and acceptances and refusals; the trying on of dresses; the calls made and received. She let her talk on, and tried to figure, as well as she could from her talk, the form and magnitude of the task laid upon her by Mr. Brandreth, of reconciling Old Hatboro’ to South Hatboro’, and uniting them in a common enterprise.
“Mrs. Bolton,” she said, abruptly leaving the subject at last, “I’ve been thinking whether I oughtn’t to do something about Mr. Peck. I don’t want him to feel that he was unwelcome to me in my house; I should like him to feel that I approved of his having been here.”
As this was not a question, Mrs. Bolton, after the fashion of country people, held her peace, and Annie went on —
“Does he never come to see you?”
“Well, he was here last night,” said Mrs. Bolton.
“Last night!” cried Annie. “Why in the world didn’t you let me know?”
“I didn’t know as you wanted to know,” began Mrs. Bolton, with a sullen defiance mixed with pleasure in Annie’s reproach. “He was out there in my settin’-room with his little girl.”
“But don’t you see that if you didn’t let me know he was here it would look to him as if I didn’t wish to meet him — as if I had told you that you were not to introduce him?”
Probably Mrs. Bolton believed too that a man’s mind was agile enough for these conjectures; but she said she did not suppose he would take it in that way; she added that he stayed longer than she expected, because the little girl seemed to like it so much; she always cried when she had to go away.
“Do you mean that she’s attached to the place?” demanded Annie.
“Well, yes, she is,” Mrs. Bolton admitted. “And the cat.”
Annie had a great desire to tell Mrs. Bolton that she had behaved very stupidly. But she knew Mrs. Bolton would not stand that, and she had to content herself with saying, severely, “The next time he comes, let me know without fail, please. What is the child like?” she asked.
“Well, I guess it must favour the mother, if anything. It don’t seem to take after him any.”
“Why don’t you have it here often, then,” asked Annie, “if it’s so much attached to the place?”
“Well I didn’t know as you wanted to have it round,” replied Mrs. Bolton bluntly.
Annie made a “Tchk!” of impatience with her obtuseness, and asked, “Where is Mr. Peck staying?”
“Well, he’s staying at Mis’ Warner’s till he can get settled.”
“Is it far from here?”
“It’s down in the north part of the village — Over the Track.”
“Is Mr. Bolton at home?”
“Yes, he is,” said Mrs. Bolton, with the effect of not intending to deny it.
“Then I want him to hitch up — now — at once — right away — and go and get the child and bring her here to dinner with me.” Annie got so far with her severity, feeling that it was needed to mask a proceeding so romantic, perhaps so silly. She added timidly, “Can he do it?”
“I d’know but what he can,” said Mrs. Bolton, dryly, and whatever her feeling really was in regard to the matter, her manner gave no hint of it. Annie did not know whether Bolton was going on her errand or not, from Mrs. Bolton, but in ten or twelve minutes she saw him emerge from the avenue into the street, in the carry-all, tightly curtained against the storm. Half an hour later he returned, and his wife set down in the library a shabbily dressed little girl, with her cheeks bright and her hair curling from the weather, and staring at Annie, and rather disposed to cry. She said hastily, “Bring in the cat, Mrs. Bolton; we’re going to have the cat to dinner with us.”
This inspiration seemed to decide the little girl against crying. The cat was equipped with a doily, and actually provided with dinner at a small table apart; the child did not look at it as Annie had expected she would, but remained with her eyes fastened on Annie herself: She did not stir from the spot where Mrs. Bolton had put her down, but she let Annie take her up and arrange her in a chair, with large books graduated to the desired height under her, and made no sign of satisfaction or disapproval. Once she looked round, when Mrs. Bolton finally went out after bringing in the last dish for dinner, and then fastened her eyes on Annie again, twisting her head shyly round to follow her in every gesture and expression as Annie fitted on a napkin under her chin, cut up her meat, poured her milk, and buttered her bread. She answered nothing to the chatter which Annie tried to make lively and entertaining, and made no sound but that of a broken and suppressed breathing. Annie had forgotten to ask her name of Mrs. Bolton, and she asked it in vain of the child herself, with a great variety of circumlocution; she was so unused to children that she was ashamed to invent any pet name for her; she called her, in what she felt to be a stiff and school-mistressly fashion, “Little Girl,” and talked on at her, growing more and more nervous herself without perceiving that the child’s condition was approaching a climax. She had taken off her glasses, from the notion that they embarrassed her guest, and she did not see the pretty lips beginning to curl, nor the searching eyes clouding with tears; the storm of sobs that suddenly burst upon her astounded her.
“Mrs. Bolton! Mrs. Bolton!” she screamed, in hysterical helplessness. Mrs. Bolton rushed in, and with an instant perception of the situation, caught the child to her bony breast, and fled with it to her own room, where Annie heard its wails die gradually away amid murmurs of comfort and reassurance from Mrs. Bolton.
She felt like a great criminal and a great fool; at the same time she was vexed with the stupid child which she had meant so well by, and indignant with Mrs. Bolton, whose flight with it had somehow implied a reproach of her behaviour. When she could govern herself, she went out to Mrs. Bolton’s room, where she found the little one quiet enough, and Mrs. Bolton tying on the long apron in which she cleared up the dinner and washed the dishes.
“I guess she’ll get along now,” she said, without the critical tone which Annie was prepared to resent. “She was scared some, and she felt kind of strange, I presume.”
“Yes, and I behaved like a simpleton, dressing up the cat, I suppose,” answered Annie. “But I thought it would amuse her.”
“You can’t tell how children will take a thing. I don’t believe they like anything that’s out of the common — well, not a great deal.”
There was a leniency in Mrs. Bolton’s manner which encouraged Annie to go on and accuse herself more and more, and then an unresponsive blankness that silenced her. She went back to her own rooms; and to get away from her shame, she began to write a letter.
It was to a friend in Rome, and from the sense we all have that a letter which is to go such a great distance ought to be a long letter, and from finding that she had really a good deal to say, she let it grow so that she began apologising for its length half a dozen pages bef
ore the end. It took her nearly the whole afternoon, and she regained a little of her self-respect by ridiculing the people she had met.
VI.
Toward five o’clock Annie was interrupted by a knock at her door, which ought to have prepared her for something unusual, for it was Mrs. Bolton’s habit to come and go without knocking. But she called “Come in!” without rising from her letter, and Mrs. Bolton entered with a stranger. The little girl clung to his forefinger, pressing her head against his leg, and glancing shyly up at Annie. She sprang up, and, “This is Mr. Peck, Miss Kilburn,” said Mrs. Bolton.
“How do you do?” said Mr. Peck, taking the hand she gave him.
He was gaunt, without being tall, and his clothes hung loosely about him, as if he had fallen away in them since they were made. His face was almost the face of the caricature American: deep, slightly curved vertical lines enclosed his mouth in their parenthesis; a thin, dust-coloured beard fell from his cheeks and chin; his upper lip was shaven. But instead of the slight frown of challenge and self-assertion which marks this face in the type, his large blue eyes, set near together, gazed sadly from under a smooth forehead, extending itself well up toward the crown, where his dry hair dropped over it.
“I am very glad to see you, Mr. Peck,” said Annie; “I’ve wanted to tell you how pleased I am that you found shelter in my old home when you first came to Hatboro’.”
Mr. Peck’s trousers were short and badly kneed, and his long coat hung formlessly from his shoulders; she involuntarily took a patronising tone toward him which was not habitual with her.
“Thank you,” he said, with the dry, serious voice which seemed the fit vocal expression of his presence; “I have been afraid that it seemed like an intrusion to you.”
“Oh, not the least,” retorted Annie. “You were very welcome. I hope you’re comfortably placed where you are now?”
“Quite so,” said the minister.
“I’d heard so much of your little girl from Mrs. Bolton, and her attachment to the house, that I ventured to send for her to-day. But I believe I gave her rather a bad quarter of an hour, and that she liked the place better under Mrs. Bolton’s régime.”
She expected some deprecatory expression of gratitude from him, which would relieve her of the lingering shame she felt for having managed so badly, but he made none.
“It was my fault. I’m not used to children, and I hadn’t taken the precaution to ask her name—”
“Her name is Idella,” said the minister.
Annie thought it very ugly, but, with the intention of saying something kind, she said, “What a quaint name!”
“It was her mother’s choice,” returned the minister. “Her own name was Ella, and my mother’s name was Ida; she combined the two.”
“Oh!” said Annie. She abhorred those made-up names in which the New England country people sometimes indulge their fancy, and Idella struck her as a particularly repulsive invention; but she felt that she must not visit the fault upon the little creature. “Don’t you think you could give me another trial some time, Idella?” She stooped down and took the child’s unoccupied hand, which she let her keep, only twisting her face away to hide it in her father’s pantaloon leg. “Come now, won’t you give me a forgiving little kiss?” Idella looked round, and Annie made bold to gather her up.
Idella broke into a laugh, and took Annie’s cheeks between her hands.
“Well, I declare!” said Mrs. Bolton. “You never can tell what that child will do next.”
“I never can tell what I will do next myself,” said Annie. She liked the feeling of the little, warm, soft body in her arms, against her breast, and it was flattering to have triumphed where she had seemed to fail so desperately. They had all been standing, and she now said, “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Peck?” She added, by an impulse which she instantly thought ill-advised, “There is something I would like to speak to you about.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Peck, seating himself beyond the stove. “We must be getting home before a great while. It is nearly tea-time.”
“I won’t detain you unduly,” said Annie.
Mrs. Bolton left them at her hint of something special to say to the minister. Annie could not have had the face to speak of Mr. Brandreth’s theatricals in that grim presence; and as it was, she resolved to put forward their serious object. She began abruptly: “Mr. Peck, I’ve been asked to interest myself for a Social Union which the ladies of South Hatboro’ are trying to establish for the operatives. I suppose you haven’t heard anything of the scheme?”
“No, I hadn’t,” said Mr. Peck.
He was one of those people who sit very high, and he now seemed taller and more impressive than when he stood.
“It is certainly a very good object,” Annie resumed; and she went on to explain it at second-hand from Mr. Brandreth as well as she could. The little girl was standing in her lap, and got between her and Mr. Peck, so that she had to look first around one side of her and then another to see how he was taking it.
He nodded his head, and said gravely, “Yes,” and “Yes,” and “Yes,” at each significant point of her statement. At the end he asked: “And are the means forthcoming? Have they raised the money for renting and furnishing the rooms?”
“Well, no, they haven’t yet, or not quite, as I understand.”
“Have they tried to interest the working people themselves in it? If they are to value its benefits, it ought to cost them something — self-denial, privation even.”
“Yes, I know,” Annie began.
“I’m not satisfied,” the minister pursued, “that it is wise to provide people with even harmless amusements that take them much away from their homes. These things are invented by well-to-do people who have no occupation, and think that others want pastimes as much as themselves. But what working people want is rest, and what they need are decent homes where they can take it. Besides, unless they help to support this union out of their own means, the better sort among them will feel wounded by its existence, as a sort of superfluous charity.”
“Yes, I see,” said Annie. She saw this side of the affair with surprise. The minister seemed to have thought more about such matters than she had, and she insensibly receded from her first hasty generalisation of him, and paused to reapproach him on another level. The little girl began to play with her glasses, and accidentally knocked them from her nose. The minister’s face and figure became a blur, and in the purblindness to which she was reduced she had a moment of clouded volition in which she was tempted to renounce, and even oppose, the scheme for a Social Union, in spite of her promise to Mr. Brandreth. But she remembered that she was a consistent and faithful person, and she said: “The ladies have a plan for raising the money, and they’ve applied to me to second it — to use my influence somehow among the villagers to get them interested; and the working people can help too if they choose. But I’m quite a stranger amongst those I’m expected to influence, and I don’t at all know how they will take it.” The minister listened, neither prompting nor interrupting. “The ladies’ plan is to have an entertainment at one of the cottages, and charge an admission, and devote the proceeds to the union.” She paused. Mr. Peck still remained silent, but she knew he was attentive. She pushed on. “They intend to have a — a representation, in the open air, of one of Shakespeare’s plays, or scenes from one—”
“Do you wish me,” interrupted the minister, “to promote the establishment of this union? Is that why you speak to me of it?”
“Why, I don’t know why I speak to you of it,” she replied with a laugh of embarrassment, to which he was cold, apparently. “I certainly couldn’t ask you to take part in an affair that you didn’t approve.”
“I don’t know that I disapprove of it. Properly managed, it might be a good thing.”
“Yes, of course. But I understand why you might not sympathise with that part of it, and that is why I told you of it,” said Annie.
“What part?”
; “The — the — theatricals.”
“Why not?” asked the minister.
“I know — Mrs. Bolton told me you were very liberal,” Annie faltered on; “but I didn’t expect you as a — But of course—”
“I read Shakespeare a great deal,” said Mr. Peck. “I have never been in the theatre; but I should like to see one of his plays represented where it could cause no one to offend.”
“Yes,” said Annie, “and this would be by amateurs, and there could be no possible ‘offence in it.’ I wished to know how the general idea would strike you. Of course the ladies would be only too glad of your advice and co-operation. Their plan is to sell tickets to every one for the theatricals, and to a certain number of invited persons for a supper, and a little dance afterward on the lawn.”
“I don’t know if I understand exactly,” said the minister.
Annie repeated her statement more definitely, and explained, from Mr. Brandreth, as before, that the invitations were to be given so as to eliminate the shop-hand element from the supper and dance.
Mr. Peck listened quietly. “That would prevent my taking part in the affair,” he said, as quietly as he had listened.
“Of course — dancing,” Annie began.
“It is not that. Many people who hold strictly to the old opinions now allow their children to learn dancing. But I could not join at all with those who were willing to lay the foundations of a Social Union in a social disunion — in the exclusion of its beneficiaries from the society of their benefactors.”
He was not sarcastic, but the grotesqueness of the situation as he had sketched it was apparent. She remembered now that she had felt something incongruous in it when Mr. Brandreth exposed it, but not deeply.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 327