“Thank you,” said Annie, touched by something gentle and honest in his words.
“He was a Christian gentleman,” said Mr. Gerrish with authority.
Putney said, without noticing Mr. Gerrish, “Well, I’m glad you’ve come back to the old place, Miss Kilburn — I almost said Annie.”
“I shouldn’t have minded, Ralph,” she retorted.
“Shouldn’t you? Well, that’s right.” Putney continued, ignoring the laugh of the others at Annie’s sally: “You’ll find Hatboro’ pretty exciting, after Rome, for a while, I suppose. But you’ll get used to it. It’s got more of the modern improvements, I’m told, and it’s more public-spirited — more snap to it. I’m told that there’s more enterprise in Hatboro’, more real crowd in South Hatboro’ alone, than there is in the Quirinal and the Vatican put together.”
“You had better come and live at South Hatboro’, Mr. Putney; that would be just the atmosphere for you,” said Mrs. Munger, with aimless hospitality. She said this to every one.
“Is it about coming to South Hatboro’ you want to consult me?” asked Putney.
“Well, it is, and it isn’t,” she began.
“Better be honest, Mrs. Munger,” said Putney. “You can’t do anything for a client who won’t be honest with his attorney. That’s what I have to continually impress upon the reprobates who come to me. I say, ‘It don’t matter what you’ve done; if you expect me to get you off, you’ve got to make a clean breast of it.’ They generally do; they see the sense of it.”
They all laughed, and Mr. Gerrish said, “Mr. Putney is one of Hatboro’s privileged characters, Miss Kilburn.”
“Thank you, Billy,” returned the lawyer, with mock-tenderness. “Now, Mrs. Munger, out with it!”
“You’ll have to tell him sooner or later, Mrs. Munger!” said Mrs. Gerrish, with overweening pleasure in her acquaintance with both of these superior people. “He’ll get it out of you anyway.” Her husband looked at her, and she fell silent.
Mrs. Munger swept her with a tolerant smile as she looked up at Putney. “Why, it’s really Miss Kilburn’s affair,” she began; and she laid the case before the lawyer with a fulness that made Annie wince.
Putney took a piece of tobacco from his pocket, and tore off a morsel with his teeth. “Excuse me, Annie! It’s a beastly habit. But it’s saved me from something worse. You don’t know what I’ve been; but anybody in Hatboro’ can tell you. I made my shame so public that it’s no use trying to blink the past. You don’t have to be a hypocrite in a place where everybody’s seen you in the gutter; that’s the only advantage I’ve got over my fellow-citizens, and of course I abuse it; that’s nature, you know. When I began to pull up I found that tobacco helped me; I smoked and chewed both; now I only chew. Well,” he said, dropping the pathetic simplicity with which he had spoken, and turning with a fierce jocularity from the shocked and pitying look in Annie’s face to Mrs. Munger, “what do you propose to do? Brother Peck’s head seems to be pretty level, in the abstract.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Munger, willing to put the case impartially; “and I should be perfectly willing to drop the invited dance and supper, if it was thought best, though I must say I don’t at all agree with Mr. Peck in principle. I don’t see what would become of society.”
“You ought to be in politics, Mrs. Munger,” said Putney. “Your readiness to sacrifice principle to expediency shows what a reform will be wrought when you ladies get the suffrage. What does Brother Gerrish think?”
“No, no,” said Mrs. Munger. “We want an impartial opinion.”
“I always think as Brother Gerrish thinks,” said Putney. “I guess you better give up the fandango; hey, Billy?”
“No, sir; no, Mr. Putney,” answered the merchant nervously. “I can’t agree with you. And I will tell you why, sir.”
He gave his reasons, with some abatement of pomp and detail, and with the tremulous eagerness of a solemn man who expects a sarcastic rejoinder. “It would be a bad precedent. This town is full now of a class of persons who are using every opportunity to — to abuse their privileges. And this would be simply adding fuel to the flame.”
“Do you really think so, Billy?” asked the lawyer, with cool derision. “Well, we all abuse our privileges at every opportunity, of course; I was just saying that I abused mine; and I suppose those fellows would abuse theirs if you happened to hurt their wives’ and daughters’ feelings. And how are you going to manage? Aren’t you afraid that they will hang around, after the show, indefinitely, unless you ask all those who have not received invitations to the dance and supper to clear the grounds, as they do in the circus when the minstrels are going to give a performance not included in the price of admission? Mind, I don’t care anything about your Social Union.”
“Oh, but surely!” cried Mrs. Munger, “you must allow that it’s a good object.”
“Well, perhaps it is, if it will keep the men away from the rum-holes. Yes, I guess it is. You won’t sell liquor?”
“We expect to furnish coffee at cost price,” said Mrs. Munger, smiling at Putney’s joke.
“And good navy-plug too, I hope. But you see it would be rather awkward, don’t you? You see, Annie?”
“Yes, I see,” said Annie. “I hadn’t thought of that part before.”
“And you didn’t agree with Brother Peck on general principles? There we see the effect of residence abroad,” said Putney. “The uncorrupted — or I will say the uninterrupted — Hatborian has none of those aristocratic predilections of yours, Annie. He grows up in a community where there is neither poverty nor richness, and where political economy can show by the figures that the profligate shop hands get nine-tenths of the profits, and starve on ‘em, while the good little company rolls in luxury on the other tenth. But you’ve got used to something different over there, and of course Brother Peck’s ideas startled you. Well, I suppose I should have been just so myself.”
“Mr. Putney has never felt just right about the working-men since he lost the boycotters’ case,” said Mr. Gerrish, with a snicker.
“Oh, come now, Billy, why did you give me away?” said Putney, with mock suffering. “Well, I suppose I might as well own up, Mrs. Munger; it’s no use trying to keep it from you; you know it already. Yes, Annie, I defended some poor devils here for combining to injure a non-union man — for doing once just what the big manufacturing Trusts do every day of the year with impunity; and I lost the case. I expected to. I told ’em they were wrong, but I did my best for ‘em. ‘Why, you fools,’ said I — that’s the way I talk to ‘em, Annie; I call ’em pet names; they like it; they’re used to ‘em; they get ’em every day in the newspapers— ‘you fools,’ said I, ‘what do you want to boycott for, when you can vote? What do you want to break the laws for, when you can make ‘em? You idiots, you,’ said I, ‘what do you putter round for, persecuting non-union men, that have as good a right to earn their bread as you, when you might make the whole United States of America a Labour Union?’ Of course I didn’t say that in court.”
“Oh, how delicious you are, Mr. Putney!” said Mrs. Munger.
“Glad you like me, Mrs. Munger,” Putney replied.
“Yes, you’re delightful,” said the lady, recovering from the effects of the drollery which they had all pretended to enjoy, Mr. Gerrish, and Mrs. Gerrish by his leave, even more than the others. “But you’re not candid. All this doesn’t help us to a conclusion. Would you give up the invited dance and supper, or wouldn’t you? That’s the question.”
“And no shirking, hey?” asked Putney.
“No shirking.”
Putney glanced through a little transparent space in the ground-glass windows framing the room, which Mr. Gerrish used for keeping an eye on his sales-ladies to see that they did not sit down.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. “There’s Dr. Morrell. Let’s put the case to him.” He opened the door and called down the store, “Come in here, Doc!”
“What?” called back an amused voice;
and after a moment steps approached, and Dr. Morrell hesitated at the open door. He was a tall man, with a slight stoop; well dressed; full bearded; with kind, boyish blue eyes that twinkled in fascinating friendliness upon the group. “Nobody sick here, I hope?”
“Walk right in, sir! come in, Dr. Morrell,” said Mr. Gerrish. “Mrs. Munger and Mrs. Gerrish you know. Present you to Miss Kilburn, who has come to make her home among us after a prolonged residence abroad. Dr. Morrell, Miss Kilburn.”
“No, there’s nobody sick here, in one sense,” said Putney, when the doctor had greeted the ladies. “But we want your advice all the same. Mrs. Munger is in a pretty bad way morally, Doc.”
“Don’t you mind Mr. Putney, doctor!” screamed Mrs. Gerrish.
Putney said, with respectful recognition of the poor woman’s attempt to be arch, “I’ll try to keep within the bounds of truth in stating the case, Mrs. Gerrish.”
He went on to state it, with so much gravity and scrupulosity, and with so many appeals to Mrs. Munger to correct him if he were wrong, that the doctor was shaking with laughter when Putney came to an end with unbroken seriousness. At each repetition of the facts, Annie’s relation to them grew more intolerable; and she suspected Putney of an intention to punish her. “Well, what do you say?” he demanded of the doctor.
“Ha, ha, ha! ah, ha, ha.” laughed the doctor, shutting his eyes and throwing back his head.
“Seems to consider it a laughing matter,” said Putney to Mrs. Munger.
“Yes; and that is all your fault,” said Mrs. Munger, trying, with the ineffectiveness of a large woman, to pout.
“No, no, I’m not laughing.” began the doctor.
“Smiling, perhaps,” suggested Putney.
The doctor went off again. Then, “I beg — I beg your pardon, Mrs. Munger,” he resumed. “But it isn’t a professional question, you know; and I — I really couldn’t judge — have any opinion on such a matter.”
“No shirking,” said Putney. “That’s what Mrs. Munger said to me.”
“Of course not,” gurgled the doctor. “You ladies will know what to do. I’m sure I shouldn’t,” he added.
“Well, I must be going,” said Putney. “Sorry to leave you in this fix, Doc.” He flashed out of the door, and suddenly came back to offer Annie his hand. “I beg your pardon, Annie. I’m going to make Ellen bring me round. Good morning.” He bowed cursorily to the rest.
“Wait — I’ll go with you, Putney,” said the doctor.
Mrs. Munger rose, and Annie with her. “We must go too,” she said. “We’ve taken up Mr. Gerrish’s time most unconscionably,” and now Mr. Gerrish did not urge her to remain.
“Well, good-bye,” said Mrs. Gerrish, with a genteel prolongation of the last syllable.
Mr. Gerrish followed his guests down the store, and even out upon the sidewalk, where he presided with unheeded hospitality over the superfluous politeness of Putney and Dr. Morrell in putting Mrs. Munger and Annie into the phaeton. Mrs. Munger attempted to drive away without having taken up her hitching weight.
“I suppose that there isn’t a post in this town that my wife hasn’t tried to pull up in that way,” said Putney gravely.
The doctor doubled himself down with another fit of laughing.
Annie wanted to laugh too, but she did not like his laughing. She questioned if it were not undignified. She felt that it might be disrespectful. Then she asked herself why he should respect her.
IX.
“That was a great success,” said Mrs. Munger, as they drove away. Annie said nothing, and she added, “Don’t you think so?”
“Well, I confess,” said Annie, “I don’t see how, exactly. Do you mean with regard to Mr. Gerrish?”
“Oh no; I don’t care anything about him,” said Mrs. Munger, touching her pony with the tip of her whip-lash. “He’s an odious little creature, and I knew that he would go for the dance and supper because Mr. Peck was opposed to them. He’s one of the anti-Peck party in his church, and that is the reason I spoke to him. But I meant the other gentlemen. You saw how they took it.”
“I saw that they both made fun of it,” said Annie.
“Yes; that’s just the point. It’s so fortunate they were frank about it. It throws a new light on it; and if that’s the way nice people are going to look at it, why, we must give up the idea. I’m quite prepared to do so. But I want to see Mrs. Wilmington first.”
“Mrs. Munger,” said Annie uneasily, “I would rather not see Mrs. Wilmington with you on this subject; I should be of no use.”
“My dear, you would be of the greatest use,” persisted Munger, and she laid her arm across Annie’s lap, as if to prevent her jumping out of the phaeton. “As Mrs. Wilmington’s old friend, you will have the greatest influence with her.”
“But I don’t know that I wish to influence her in favour of the supper and dance; I don’t know that I believe in them,” said Annie, cowed and troubled by the affair.
“That doesn’t make the slightest difference,” said Mrs. Munger impartially. “All you will have to do is to keep still. I will put the case to her.”
She checked the pony before the bar which the flagman at the railroad crossing had let down, while a long freight train clattered deafeningly by, and then drove bumping and jouncing across the tracks. “I suppose you remember what ‘Over the Track’ means in Hatboro’?”
“Oh yes,” said Annie, with a smile. “Social perdition at the least. You don’t mean that Mrs. Wilmington lives ‘Over the Track’?”
“Yes. It isn’t so bad as it used to be, socially. Mr. Wilmington has built a very fine house on this side, and there are several pretty Queen Anne cottages going up.”
They drove along under the elms which here stood somewhat at random about the wide, grassless street, between the high, windowy bulks of the shoe shops and hat shops. The dust gradually freed itself from the cinders about the tracks, and it hardened into a handsome, newly made road beyond the houses of the shop hands. They passed some open lots, and then, on a pleasant rise of ground, they came to a stately residence, lifted still higher on its underpinning of granite blocks. It was built in a Boston suburban taste of twenty years ago, with a lofty mansard-roof, and it was painted the stone-grey colour which was once esteemed for being so quiet. The lawn before it sloped down to the road, where it ended smoothly at the brink of a neat stone wall. A black asphalt path curved from the steps by which you mounted from the street to the steps by which you mounted to the heavy portico before the massive black walnut doors.
The ladies were shown into the music-room, from which the notes of a piano were sounding when they rang, and Mrs. Wilmington rose from the instrument to meet them. A young man who had been standing beside her turned away. Mrs. Wilmington was dressed in a light morning dress with a Watteau fall, whose delicate russets and faded reds and yellows heightened the richness of her complexion and hair.
“Why, Annie,” she said, “how glad I am to see you! And you too, Mrs. Munger. How vurry nice!” Her words took value from the thick mellow tones of her voice, and passed for much more than they were worth intrinsically. She moved lazily about and got them into chairs, and was not resentful when Mrs. Munger broke out with “How hot you have it!” “Have we? We had the furnace lighted yesterday, and we’ve been in all the morning, and so we hadn’t noticed. Jack, won’t you shut the register?” she drawled over her shoulder. “This is my nephew, Mr. Jack Wilmington, Miss Kilburn. Mr. Wilmington and Mrs. Munger are old friends.”
The young fellow bowed silently, and Annie instantly took a dislike to him, his heavy jaw, long eyes, and low forehead almost hidden under a thick bang. He sat down cornerwise on a chair, and listened, with a scornful thrust of his thick lips, to their talk.
Mrs. Munger was not abashed by him. She opened her budget with all her robust authority, and once more put Annie to shame. When she came to the question of the invited supper and dance, and having previously committed Mrs. Wilmington in favour of the general sche
me, asked her what she thought of that part, Mr. Jack Wilmington answered for her —
“I should think you had a right to do what you please about it. It’s none of the hands’ business if you don’t choose to ask them.”
“Yes, that’s what any one would think — in the abstract,” said Mrs. Munger.
“Now, little boy,” said Mrs. Wilmington, with indolent amusement, putting out a silencing hand in the direction of the young man, “don’t you be so fast. You let your aunty speak for herself. I don’t know about not letting the hands stay to the dance and supper, Mrs. Munger. You know I might feel ‘put upon.’ I used to be one of the hands myself. Yes, Annie, there was a time after you went away, and after father died, when I actually fell so low as to work for an honest living.”
“I think I heard, Lyra,” said Annie; “but I had forgotten.” The fact, in connection with what had been said, made her still more uncomfortable.
“Well, I didn’t work very hard, and I didn’t have to work long. But I was a hand, and there’s no use trying to deny it. As Mr. Putney says, he and I have our record, and we don’t have to make any pretences. And the question is, whether I ought to go back on my fellow-hands.”
“Oh, but Mrs. Wilmington!” said Mrs. Munger, with intense deprecation, “that’s such a very different thing. You were not brought up to it; it was just temporary; and besides—”
“And besides, there was Mr. Wilmington, I know. He was very opportune. I might have been a hand at this moment if Mr. Wilmington had not come along and invited me to be a head — the head of his house. But I don’t know, Annie, whether I oughtn’t to remember my low beginnings.”
“I suppose we all like to be consistent,” answered Annie aimlessly, uneasily.
“Yes,” Mrs. Munger broke in; “but they were not your beginnings, Mrs. Wilmington; they were your incidents — your accidents.”
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 330