“Well?” said Annie, to the change which came over Morrell's face when Mrs.
Munger was gone.
“Oh, it's a miserable business! He must go on now to the end of his
debauch. He's got past doing any mischief, I'm thankful to say. But I had
hoped to tide him over a while longer, and now that fool has spoiled
everything. Well!”
Annie's heart warmed to his vexation, and she postponed another emotion.
“Yes, she _is_ a fool. I wish you had qualified the term, doctor.”
They looked at each other solemnly, and then laughed. “It won't do for a
physician to swear,” said Morrell. “I wish you'd give me a cup of coffee.
I've been up all night.”
“With Ralph?”
“With Putney.”
“You shall have it instantly; that is, as instantly as Mrs. Bolton can
kindle up a fire and make it.” She went out to the kitchen, and gave the
order with an imperiousness which she softened in Dr. Morrell's interest by
explaining rather fully to Mrs. Bolton.
When she came back she wanted to talk seriously, tragically, about Putney.
But the doctor would not. He said that it paid to sit up with Putney, drunk
or sober, and hear him go on. He repeated some things Putney said about Mr.
Peck, about Gerrish, about Mrs. Munger.
“But why did you try to put her off in that way--to make her believe he
wasn't intoxicated?” asked Annie, venting her postponed emotion, which was
of disapproval.
“I don't know. It came into my head. But she knows better.”
“It was rather cruel; not that she deserves any mercy. She caught so at the
idea.”
“Oh yes, I saw that. She'll humbug herself with it, and you'll see that
before night there'll be two theories of Putney's escapade. I think the
last will be the popular one. It will jump with the general opinion of
Putney's ability to carry anything out. And Mrs. Munger will do all she can
to support it.”
Mrs. Bolton brought in the coffee-pot, and Annie hesitated a moment, with
her hand on it, before pouring out a cup.
“I don't like it,” she said.
“I know you don't. But you can say that it wasn't Putney who hoaxed Mrs.
Munger, but Dr. Morrell.”
“Oh, you didn't either of you hoax her.”
“Well, then, there's no harm done.”
“I'm not so sure.”
“And you won't give me any coffee?”
“Oh yes, I'll give you some _coffee_,” said Annie, with a sigh of
baffled scrupulosity that made them both laugh.
He broke out again after he had begun to drink his coffee.
“Well?” she demanded, from her own lapse into silence.
“Oh, nothing! Only Putney. He wants Brother Peck, as he calls him, to unite
all the religious elements of Hatboro' in a church of his own, and send
out missionaries to the heathen of South Hatboro' to preach a practical
Christianity. He makes South Hatboro' stand for all that's worldly and
depraved.”
“Poor Ralph! Is that the way he talks?”
“Oh, not all the time. He talks a great many other ways.”
“I wonder you can laugh.”
“He's been very severe on Brother Peck for neglecting the discipline of
his child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the
community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman.
Putney was very hard upon your sex, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all
the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice.”
He looked across the table at her with his merry eyes, whose sweetness
she felt even in her sudden preoccupation with the notion which she now
launched upon him, leaning forward and pushing some books and magazines
aside, as if she wished to have nothing between her need and his response.
“Dr. Morrell, what should you think of my asking Mr. Peck to give me his
little girl?”
“To give you his--”
“Yes. Let me take Idella--keep her--adopt her! I've nothing to do, as you
know very well, and she'd be an occupation; and it would be far better
for her. What Ralph says is true. She's growing up without any sort of
training; and I think if she keeps on she will be mischievous to herself
and every one else.”
“Really?” asked the doctor. “Is it so bad as that?”
“Of course not. And of course I don't want Mr. Peck to renounce all claim
to his child; but to let me have her for the present, or indefinitely, and
get her some decent clothes, and trim her hair properly, and give her some
sort of instruction--”
“May I come in?” drawled Mrs. Wilmington's mellow voice, and Annie turned
and saw Lyra peering round the edge of the half-opened library door. “I've
been discreetly hemming and scraping and hammering on the wood-work so as
not to overhear, and I'd have gone away if I hadn't been afraid of being
overheard.”
“Oh, come in, Lyra,” said Annie; and she hoped that she had kept the spirit
of resignation with which she spoke out of her voice.
Dr. Morrell jumped up with an apparent desire to escape that wounded and
exasperated her. She put out her hand quite haughtily to him and asked,
“Oh, must you go?”
“Yes. How do you do, Mrs. Wilmington? You'd better get Miss Kilburn to give
you a cup of her coffee.”
“Oh, I will,” said Lyra. She forbore any reference, even by a look, to the
intimate little situation she had disturbed.
Morrell added to Annie: “I like your plan. It's the best thing you could
do.”
She found she had been keeping his hand, and in the revulsion from wrath to
joy she violently wrung it.
“I'm _so_ glad!” She could not help following him to the door, in the
hope that he would say something more, but he did not, and she could only
repeat her rapturous gratitude in several forms of incoherency.
She ran back to Mrs. Wilmington. “Lyra, what do you think of my taking Mr.
Peck's little girl?”
Mrs. Wilmington never allowed herself to seem surprised at anything; she
was, in fact, surprised at very few things. She had got into the easiest
chair in the room, and she answered from it, with a luxurious interest in
the affair, “Well, you know what people will say, Annie.”
“No, I don't. _What_ will they say?”
“That you're after Mr. Peck pretty openly.”
Annie turned scarlet. “And when they find I'm _not_?” she demanded
with severity, that had no effect upon Lyra.
“Then they'll say you couldn't get him.”
“They may say what they please. What do you think of the plan?”
“I think it would be the greatest blessing for the poor little thing,” said
Lyra, with a nearer approach to seriousness than she usually made. “And the
greatest care for you,” she added, after a moment.
“I shall not care for the care. I shall be glad of it--thankful for it,”
cried Annie fervidly.
“If you can get it,” Lyra suggested.
“I believe I can get it. I believe I can make Mr. Peck see that it's a
duty. I shall ask him to regard it as a charity to me--as a mercy.”
“Well, that's a good way to work upon Mr. Peck's feelings,” said Lyra
demurely. “Was that the plan that Dr. Morrell approved of so highly?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't know but it was some course of treatment. You pressed his hand
so affectionately. I said to myself, Well, Annie's either an enthusiastic
patient, or else--”
“What?” demanded Annie, at the little stop Lyra made.
“Well, you know what people do _say_, Annie.”
“What?”
“Why, that you're very much out of health, or--” Lyra made another of her
tantalising stops.
“Or what?”
“Or Dr. Morrell is very much in love.”
“Lyra, I can't allow you to say such things to me.”
“No; that's what I've kept saying to myself all the time. But you would
have it _out_ of me. _I_ didn't want to say it.”
It was impossible to resist Lyra's pretended deprecation. Annie laughed. “I
suppose I can't help people's talking, and I ought to be too old to care.”
“You ought, but you're not,” said Lyra flatteringly. “Well, Annie, what do
you think of our little evening at Mrs. Munger's in the dim retrospect?
Poor Ralph! What did the doctor say about him?” She listened with so keen
a relish for the report of Putney's sayings that Annie felt as if she had
been turning the affair into comedy for Lyra's amusement. “Oh dear, I wish
I could hear him! I thought I should have died last night when he came
back, and began to scare everybody blue with his highly personal remarks.
I wish he'd had time to get round to the Northwicks.”
“Lyra,” said Annie, nerving herself to the office; “don't you think it was
wicked to treat that poor girl as you did?”
“Well, I suppose that's the way some people might look at it,” said Lyra
dispassionately.
“Then how--_how_ could you do it?”
“Oh, it's easy enough to behave wickedly, Annie, when you feel like it,”
said Lyra, much amused by Annie's fervour, apparently. “Besides, I don't
know that it was so _very_ wicked. What makes you think it was?”
“Oh, it wasn't that merely. Lyra, may I--_may_ I speak to you plainly,
frankly--like a sister?” Annie's heart filled with tenderness for Lyra,
with the wish to help her, to save a person who charmed her so much.
“Well, like a _step_-sister, you may,” said Lyra demurely.
“It wasn't for her sake alone that I hated to see it. It was for your
sake--for _his_ sake.”
“Well, that's very kind of you, Annie,” said Lyra, without the least
resentment. “And I know what you mean. But it really doesn't hurt
either Jack or me. I'm not very goody-goody, Annie; I don't pretend to
be; but I'm not very baddy-baddy either. I assure you”--Lyra laughed
mischievously--“I'm one of the very few persons in Hatboro' who are better
than they should be.”
“I know it, Lyra--I know it. But you have no right to keep him from taking
a fancy to some young girl--and marrying her; to keep him to yourself; to
make people talk.”
“There's something in that,” Lyra assented, with impartiality. “But I don't
think it would be well for Jack to marry yet; and if I see him taking a
fancy to any real nice girl, I sha'n't interfere with him. But I shall be
very _particular_, Annie.”
She looked at Annie with such a droll mock earnest, and shook her head with
such a burlesque of grandmotherly solicitude, that Annie laughed in spite
of herself. “Oh, Lyra, Lyra!”
“And as for me,” Lyra went on, “I assure you I don't care for the little
bit of harm it does me.”
“But you ought--you ought!” cried Annie. “You ought to respect yourself
enough to care. You ought to respect other women enough.”
“Oh, I guess I'd let the balance of the sex slide, Annie,” said Lyra.
“No, you mustn't; you can't. We are all bound together; we owe everything
to each other.”
“Isn't that rather Peckish?” Lyra suggested.
“I don't know. But it's true, Lyra. And I shouldn't be ashamed of getting
it from Mr. Peck.”
“Oh, I didn't say you would be.”
“And I hope you won't be hurt with me. I know that it's a most
unwarrantable thing to speak to you about such a matter; but you know why
I do it.”
“Yes, I suppose it's because you like me; and I appreciate that, I assure
you, Annie.”
Lyra was soberer than she had yet been, and Annie felt that she was really
gaining ground. “And your husband; you ought to respect _him_--”
Lyra laughed out with great relish. “Oh, now, Annie, you _are_ joking!
Why in the _world_ should I respect Mr. Wilmington? An old man like
him marrying a young girl like me!” She jumped up and laughed at the look
in Annie's face. “Will you go round with me to the Putneys? thought Ellen
might like to see us.”
“No, no. I can't go,” said Annie, finding it impossible to recover at once
from the quite unanswerable blow her sense of decorum--she thought it her
moral sense--had received.
“Well, you'll be glad to have _me_ go, anyway,” said Lyra. She saw
Annie shrinking from her, and she took hold of her, and pulled her up and
kissed her. “You dear old thing! I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the
world. And whichever it is, Annie, the parson or the doctor, I wish him
joy.”
That afternoon, as Annie was walking to the village, the doctor drove up to
the sidewalk, and stopped near her. “Miss Kilburn, I've got a letter from
home. They write me about my mother in a way that makes me rather anxious,
and I shall run down to Chelsea this evening.”
“Oh, I'm sorry for your bad news. I hope it's nothing serious.”
“She's old; that's the only cause for anxiety. But of course I must go.”
“Oh yes, indeed. I do hope you'll find all right with her.”
“Thank you very much. I'm sorry that I must leave Putney at such a time.
But I leave him with Mr. Peck, who's promised to be with him. I thought
you'd like to know.”
“Yes, I do; it's very kind of you--very kind indeed.”
“Thank you,” said the doctor. It was not the phrase exactly, but it served
the purpose of the cordial interest in which they parted as well as
another.