Annie Kilburn. William Dean Howells
and in snorts and sniffs still more intense in purport.
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,