Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  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.”

  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 t
he 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.”