Annie Kilburn Part 23

"I'm afraid we must say good night at once," said Mr. Northwick. "We had arranged to have our friends and some other guests with us at home. And we're quite late now."

Mrs. Munger protested. "Take our Juliet from us! Oh, Miss Northwick, how can I thank you enough? The whole play turned upon you!"

"It's just as well," she said to Annie, as the Northwicks and their friends walked across the lawn to the gate, where they had carriages waiting.

"They'd have been difficult to manage, and everybody else will feel a little more at home without them. Poor Mr. Brandreth, I'm sure _you_ will! I did pity you so, with such a Juliet on your hands!"

In-doors the representatives of the lower cla.s.ses were less at ease than they were without. Some of the ministers mingled with them, and tried to form a bond between them and the other villagers. Mr. Peck took no part in this work; he stood holding his elbows with his hands, and talking with a perfunctory air to an old lady of his congregation.

The young ladies of South Hatboro', as Mrs. Munger's a.s.sistants, went about impartially to high and low with trays of refreshments. Annie saw Putney, where he stood with his wife and boy, refuse coffee, and she watched him anxiously when the claret-cup came. He waved his hand over it, and said, "No; I'll take some of the lemonade." As he lifted a gla.s.s of it toward his lips he stopped and made as if to put it down again, and his hand shook so that he spilled some of it. Then he dashed it off, and reached for another gla.s.s. "I want some more," he said, with a laugh; "I'm thirsty." He drank a second gla.s.s, and when he saw a tray coming toward Annie, where Dr. Morrell had joined her, he came over and exchanged his empty gla.s.s for a full one.

"Not much to brag of as lemonade," he said, "but first-rate rum punch."

"Look here, Putney," whispered the doctor, laying his hand on his arm, "don't you take any more of that. Give me that gla.s.s!"

"Oh, all right!" laughed Putney, dashing it off. "You're welcome to the tumbler, if you want it, Doc."

XVIII.

Mrs. Munger's guests kept on talking and laughing. With the coffee and the punch there began to be a little more freedom. Some prohibitionists among the working people went away when they found that the lemonade was punch; but Mrs. Munger did not know it, and she saw the ideal of a Social Union figuratively accomplished in her own house. She stirred about among her guests till she produced a fleeting, empty good-fellowship among them. One of the shoe-shop hands, with an inextinguishable scent of leather and the character of a droll, seconded her efforts with noisy jokes. He proposed games, and would not be snubbed by the refusal of his boss to countenance him, he had the applause of so many others. Mrs. Munger approved of the idea.

"Don't you think it would be great fun, Mrs. Gerrish?" she asked.

"Well, now, if Squire Putney would lead off," said the joker, looking round.

Putney could not be found, nor Dr. Morrell.

"They're off somewhere for a smoke," said Mrs. Munger. "Well, that's right.

I want everybody to feel that my house is their own to-night, and to come and go just as they like. Do you suppose Mr. Peck is offended?" she asked, under her breath, as she pa.s.sed Annie. "He _couldn't_ feel that this is the same thing; but I can't see him anywhere. He wouldn't go without taking leave, you don't suppose?"

Annie joined Mrs. Putney. They talked at first with those who came to ask where Putney and the doctor were; but finally they withdrew into a little alcove from the parlour, where Mrs. Munger approved of their being when she discovered them; they must be very tired, and ought to rest on the lounge there. Her theory of the exhaustion of those who had taken part in the play embraced their families.

The time wore on toward midnight, and her guests got themselves away with more or less difficulty as they attempted the formality of leave-taking or not. Some of the hands who thought this necessary found it a serious affair; but most of them slipped off without saying good night to Mrs.

Munger or expressing that rapture with the whole evening from beginning to end which the ladies of South Hatboro' professed. The ladies of South Hatboro' and Old Hatboro' had met in a general intimacy not approached before, and they parted with a flow of mutual esteem. The Gerrish children had dropped asleep in nooks and corners, from which Mr. Gerrish hunted them up and put them together for departure, while his wife remained with Mrs.

Munger, unable to stop talking, and no longer amenable to the looks with which he governed her in public.

Lyra came downstairs, hooded and wrapped for departure, with Jack Wilmington by her side. "Why, _Ellen_!" she said, looking into the little alcove from the hall. "Are you here yet? And Annie! Where in the world is Ralph?" At the pleading look with which Mrs. Putney replied, she exclaimed: "Oh, it's what I was afraid of! I don't see what the woman could have been about! But of course she didn't think of poor Ralph. Ellen, let me take you and Winthrop home! Dr. Morrell will be sure to bring Ralph."

"Well," said Mrs. Putney pa.s.sively, but without rising.

"Annie can come too. There's plenty of room. Jack can walk."

Jack Wilmington joined Lyra in urging Annie to take his place. He said to her, apart, "Young Munger has been telling me that Putney got at the sideboard and carried off the rum. I'll stay and help look after him."

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 h.e.l.l-fire before a poor devil who can't keep out of it when he sees it, is better worth looking at."

"Mr. Putney, I a.s.sure 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, pa.s.sive vigilance which she had worn since her husband reappeared.

She pushed the men aside.