Annie Kilburn Part 31

XXIV.

Dr. Morrell came to see Annie late the next Wednesday evening.

"I didn't know you'd come back," she said. She returned to the rocking-chair, from which she came forward to greet him, and he dropped into an easy seat near the table piled with books and sewing.

"I didn't know it myself half an hour ago."

"Really? And is this your first visit? I must be a very interesting case."

"You are--always. How have you been?"

"I? I hardly know whether I've been at all," she answered, in mechanical parody of his own reply. "So many other things have been of so much more importance."

She let her eyes rest full upon his, with a sense of returning comfort and safety in his presence, and after a deep breath of satisfaction, she asked, "How did you leave your mother?"

"Very much better--entirely out of danger."

"It's so odd to think of any one's having a family. To me it seems the normal condition not to have any relatives."

"Well, we can't very well dispense with mothers," said the doctor. "We have to begin with them, at any rate."

"Oh, I don't object to them. I only wonder at them."

They fell into a cosy and mutually interesting talk about their separate past, and he gave her glimpses of the life, simple and studious, he had led before he went abroad. She confessed to two mistakes in which she had mechanically persisted concerning him; one that he came from Charlestown instead of Chelsea, and the other that his first name was Joseph instead of James. She did not own that she had always thought it odd he should be willing to remain in a place like Hatboro', and that it must argue a strangely unambitious temperament in a man of his ability. She diverted the impulse to a general satire of village life, and ended by saying that she was getting to be a perfect villager herself.

He laughed, and then, "How has Hatboro' been getting along?" he asked.

"Simply seething with excitement," she answered. "But I should hardly know where to begin if I tried to tell you," she added. "It seems such an age since I saw you."

"Thank you," said the doctor.

"I didn't mean to be _quite_ so flattering; but you have certainly marked an epoch. Really, I _don't_ know where to begin. I wish you'd seen somebody else first--Ralph and Ellen, or Mrs. Wilmington."

"I might go and see them now."

"No; stay, now you're here, though I know I shall not do justice to the situation." But she was able to possess him of it with impartiality, even with a little humour, all the more because she was at heart intensely partisan and serious. "No one knows what Mr. Gerrish intends to do next.

He has kept quietly about his business; and he told some of the ladies who tried to interview him that he was not prepared to talk about the course he had taken. He doesn't seem to be ashamed of his behaviour; and Ralph thinks that he's either satisfied with it, and intends to let it stand as a protest, or else he's going to strike another blow on the next business meeting. But he's even kept Mrs. Gerrish quiet, and all we can do is to unite Mr. Peck's friends provisionally. Ralph's devoted himself to that, and he says he has talked forty-eight hours to the day ever since."

Is he--"

"Yes; perfectly! I could hardly believe it when I saw him at church on Sunday. It was like seeing one risen from the dead. What he must have gone through, and Ellen! She told me how Mr. Peck had helped him in the struggle. She attributes everything to him. But of course you think he had nothing to do with it."

"What makes you think that?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know. Wouldn't that naturally be the att.i.tude of Science?"

"Toward religion? Perhaps. But I'm not Science--with a large S. May be that's the reason why I left the case with Mr. Peck," said the doctor, smiling. "Putney didn't leave off my medicine, did he?"

"He never got well so soon before. They both say that. I didn't think you could be so narrow-minded, Dr. Morrell. But of course your scientific bigotry couldn't admit the effect of the moral influence. It would be too much like a miracle; you would have to allow for a mystery."

"I have to allow for a good many," said the doctor. "The world is full of mysteries for me, if you mean things that science hasn't explored yet. But I hope that they'll all yield to the light, and that somewhere there'll be light enough to clear up even the spiritual mysteries."

"Do you really?" she demanded eagerly. "Then you believe in a life hereafter? You believe in a moral government of the--"

He retreated, laughing, from her ardent pursuit. "Oh, I'm not going to commit myself. But I'll go so far as to say that I like to hear Mr. Peck preach, and that I want him to stay. I don't say he had nothing to do with Putney's straightening up. Putney had a great deal to do with it himself.

What does he think Mr. Peck's chances are?"

"If Mr. Gerrish tries to get him dismissed? He doesn't know; he's quite in the dark. He says the party of the perverse--the people who think Mr.

Gerrish must have had some good reason for his behaviour, simply because they can't see any--is unexpectedly large; and it doesn't help matters with the more respectable people that the most respectable, like Mr. Wilmington and Colonel Marvin, are Mr. Peck's friends. They think there must be something wrong if such good men are opposed to Mr. Gerrish."

"And I suspect," said Dr. Morrell soberly, "that Putney's champions.h.i.+p isn't altogether an advantage. The people all concede his brilliancy, and they are prouder of him on account of his infirmity; but I guess they like to feel their superiority to him in practical matters. They admire him, but they don't want to follow him."

"Oh, I suppose so," said Annie disconsolately. "And I imagine that Mr.

Wilmington's course is attributed to Lyra, and that doesn't help Mr. Peck much with the husbands of the ladies who don't approve of her."

The doctor tacitly declined to touch this delicate point. He asked, after a pause, "You'll be at the meeting?"

"I couldn't keep away. But I've no vote, that's the worst. I can only suffer in the cause." The doctor smiled. "You must go, too," she added eagerly.

"Oh, I shall go; I couldn't keep away either. Besides, I can vote. How are you getting on with your little _protegee_?

"Idella? Well, it isn't such a simple matter as I supposed, quite. Did you ever hear anything about her mother?"

"Nothing more than what every one has. Why?" asked the doctor, with scientific curiosity. "Do you find traits that the father doesn't account for?"

"Yes. She is very vain and greedy and quick-tempered."

"Are those traits uncommon in children?"

"In such a degree I should think they were. But she's very affectionate, too, and you can do anything with her through her love of praise. She puzzles me a good deal. I wish I knew something about her mother. But Mr.

Peck himself is a puzzle. With all my respect for him and regard and admiration, I can't help seeing that he's a very imperfect character."

Doctor Morrell laughed. "There's a great deal of human nature in man."

"There isn't enough in Mr. Peck," Annie retorted. "From the very first he has said things that have stirred me up and put me in a fever; but he always seems to be cold and pa.s.sive himself."

"Perhaps he _is_ cold," said the doctor.

"But has he any _right_ to be so?" retorted Annie, with certainly no coldness of her own.

"Well, I don't know. I never thought of the right or wrong of a man's being what he was born. Perhaps we might justly blame his ancestors."

Annie broke into a laugh at herself: "Of course. But don't you think that a man who is able to put things as he does--who can make you see, for example, the stupidity and cruelty of things that always seemed right and proper before--don't you think that he's guilty of a kind of hypocrisy if he doesn't _feel_ as well as see?"

"No, I can't say that I do," said the doctor, with pleasure in the feminine excess of her demand. "And there are so many ways of feeling. We're apt to think that our own way is the only way, of course; but I suppose that most philanthropists--men who have done the most to better conditions--have been people of cold temperaments; and yet you can't say they are unfeeling."