They went away together, leaving her to her despair, which had passed into
a sort of torpor by the following night, when Dr. Morrell came again, out
of what she knew must be mere humanity; he could not respect her any
longer. He told her, as if for her comfort, that Putney had gone to the
depot to meet Mr. Peck, who was expected back in the eight-o'clock train,
and was to labour with him all night long if necessary to get him to
change, or at least postpone, his purpose. The feeling in his favour was
growing. Putney hoped to put it so strongly to him as a proof of duty that
he could not resist it.
Annie listened comfortlessly. Whatever happened, nothing could take away
the shame of her weakness now. She even wished, feebly, vaguely, that she
might be forced to keep her word.
A sound of running on the gravel-walk outside and a sharp pull at the
door-bell seemed to jerk them both to their feet.
Some one stepped into the hall panting, and the face of William Savor
showed itself at the door of the room where they stood. “Doc--Doctor
Morrell, come--come quick! There's been an accident--at--the depot.
Mr.--Peck--” He panted out the story, and Annie saw rather than heard how
the minister tried to cross the track from his train, where it had halted
short of the station, and the flying express from the other quarter caught
him from his feet, and dropped the bleeding fragment that still held his
life beside the rail a hundred yards away, and then kept on in brute
ignorance into the night.
“Where is he? Where have you got him?” the doctor demanded of Savor.
“At my house.”
The doctor ran out of the house, and she heard his buggy whirl away,
followed by the fainter sound of Savor's feet as he followed running, after
he had stopped to repeat his story to the Boltons. Annie turned to the
farmer. “Mr. Bolton, get the carry-all. I must go.”
“And me too,” said his wife.
“Why, no, Pauliny; I guess you better stay. I guess it'll come out all
right in the end,” Bolton began. “_I_ guess William has exaggerated
some may be. Anyrate, who's goin' to look after the little girl if you
come?”
“_I_ am,” Mrs. Bolton snapped back. “She's goin' with me.”
“Of course she is. Be quick, Mr. Bolton!” Annie called from the stairs,
which she had already mounted half-way.
She caught up the child, limp with sleep, from its crib, and began to dress
it. Idella cried, and fought away the hands that tormented her, and made
herself now very stiff and now very lax; but Annie and Mrs. Bolton together
prevailed against her, and she was dressed, and had fallen asleep again
in her clothes while the women were putting on their hats and sacks, and
Bolton was driving up to the door with the carry-all.
“Why, I can see,” he said, when he got out to help them in, “just how
William's got his idee about it. His wife's an excitable kind of a woman,
and she's sent him off lickety-split after the doctor without looking to
see what the matter was. There hain't never been anybody hurt at our depot,
and it don't stand to reason--”
“Oliver Bolton, _will_ you hush that noise?” shrieked his wife. “If
the world was burnin' up you'd say it was nothing but a chimbley on fire
som'er's.”
“Well, well, Pauliny, have it your own way, have it your own way,” said
Bolton. “I ain't sayin' but what there's _some_thin' in William's
story; but you'll see't he's exaggerated. Git up!”
“Well, do hurry, and _do_ be still!” said his wife.
“Yes, yes. It's all right, Pauliny; all right. Soon's I'm out the lane,
you'll see't I'll drive _fast_ enough.”
Mrs. Bolton kept a grim silence, against which her husband's babble of
optimism played like heat-lightning on a night sky.
Idella woke with the rush of cold air, and in the dark and strangeness
began to cry, and wailed heart-breakingly between her fits of louder
sobbing, and then fell asleep again before they reached the house where
her father lay dying.
They had put him in the best bed in Mrs. Savor's little guest-room, and
when Annie entered, the minister was apologising to her for spoiling it.
“Now don't you say one word, Mr. Peck,” she answered him. “It's all right.
I ruthah see you layin' there just's you be than plenty of folks that--”
She stopped for want of an apt comparison, and at sight of Annie she said,
as if he were a child whose mind was wandering: “Well, I declare, if here
ain't Miss Kilburn come to see you, Mr. Peck! And Mis' Bolton! Well, the
land!”
Mrs. Savor came and shook hands with them, and in her character of hostess
urged them forward from the door, where they had halted. “Want to see Mr.
Peck? Well, he's real comf'table now; ain't he, Dr. Morrell? We got him all
fixed up nicely, and he ain't in a bit o' pain. It's his spine that's hurt,
so't he don't feel nothin'; but he's just as clear in his mind as what you
or I be. _Ain't_ he, doctor?”
“He's not suffering,” said Dr. Morrell, to whom Annie's eye wandered from
Mrs. Savor, and there was something in his manner that made her think the
minister was not badly hurt. She went forward with Mr. and Mrs. Bolton, and
after they had both taken the limp hand that lay outside the covering, she
touched it too. It returned no pressure, but his large, wan eyes looked at
her with such gentle dignity and intelligence that she began to frame in
her mind an excuse for what seemed almost an intrusion.
“We were afraid you were hurt badly, and we thought--we thought you might
like to see Idella--and so--we came. She is in the next room.”
“Thank you,” said the minister. “I presume that I am dying; the doctor
tells me that I have but a few hours to live.”
Mrs. Savor protested, “Oh, I guess you ain't a-goin' to die _this_
time, Mr. Peck.” Annie looked from Dr. Morrell to Putney, who stood with
him on the other side of the bed, and experienced a shock from their
gravity without yet being able to accept the fact it implied. “There's
plenty of folks,” continued Mrs. Savor, “hurt worse'n what you be that's
alive to-day and as well as ever they was.”
Bolton seized his chance. “It's just what I said to Pauliny, comin' along.
'You'll see,' said I, 'Mr. Peck'll be out as spry as any of us before a
great while.' That's the way I felt about it from the start.”
“All you got to do is to keep up courage,” said Mrs. Savor.
“That's so; that's half the battle,” said Bolton.
There were numbers of people in the room and at the door of the next. Annie
saw Colonel Marvin and Jack Wilmington. She heard afterward that he was
going to take the same train to Boston with Mr. Peck, and had helped to
bring him to the Savors' house. The stationmaster was there, and some other
railroad employes.
The doctor leaned across the bed and lifted slightly the arm that lay
there, taking the wrist between his thumb and finger. “I think we had
better let Mr. Peck rest a while,” he said to the company generally, “We're
doing him no good.”
The people began to go; some of them said, “Well, good night!” as if they
would meet again in the morning. They all made the pretence that it was a
slight matter, and treated the wounded man as if he were a child. He did
not humour the pretence, but said “Good-bye” in return for their “Good
night” with a quiet patience.
Mrs. Savor hastened after her retreating guests. “I ain't a-goin' to let
you go without a sup of coffee,” she said. “I want you should all stay and
git some, and I don't believe but what a little of it would do Mr. Peck
good.”
The surface of her lugubrious nature was broken up, and whatever was kindly
and cheerful in its depths floated to the top; she was almost gay in the
demand which the calamity made upon her. Annie knew that she must have seen
and helped to soothe the horror of mutilation which she could not even let
her fancy figure, and she followed her foolish bustle and chatter with
respectful awe.
“Rebecca'll have it right off the stove in half a minute now,” Mrs. Savor
concluded; and from a further room came the cheerful click of cups, and
then a wandering whiff of the coffee; life in its vulgar kindliness touched
and made friends with death, claiming it a part of nature too.
The night at Mrs. Munger's came back to Annie from the immeasurable
remoteness into which all the past had lapsed. She looked up at Dr. Morrell
across the bed.
“Would you like to speak with Mr. Peck?” he asked officially. “Better do it
now,” he said, with one of his short nods.
Putney came and set her a chair. She would have liked to fall on her knees
beside the bed; but she took the chair, and drew the minister's hand into
hers, stretching her arm above his head on the pillow. He lay like some
poor little wounded boy, like Putney's Winthrop; the mother that is in
every woman's heart gushed out of hers in pity upon him, mixed with filial
reverence. She had thought that she should confess her baseness to him, and
ask his forgiveness, and offer to fulfil with the people he had chosen for
the guardians of his child that interrupted purpose of his. But in the
presence of death, so august, so simple, all the concerns of life seemed
trivial, and she found herself without words. She sobbed over the poor hand
she held. He turned his eyes upon her and tried to speak, but his lips only
let out a moaning, shuddering sound, inarticulate of all that she hoped or
feared he might prophesy to shape her future.
Life alone has any message for life, but from the beginning of time it has
put its ear to the cold lips that must for ever remain dumb.