Annie Kilburn

“ She apparently distinguished between Annie and the Boltons, or if not quite this, she showed a distinct preference for her company, and for her part of the house. She hung about Annie with a flattering curiosity and interest in all she did. She lost every trace of shyness with her, but developed an intense admiration for her in every way—for her dresses, her rings, her laces, for the elegancies that marked her a gentlewoman. She pronounced them prettier than Mrs. Warner's things, and the house prettier and larger.
“Should you like to live with me?” Annie asked. ”

“ He went out with a dignity that thrilled Annie. Lyra leaned toward her and said, choking with laughter, “He's left Idella asleep upstairs. We haven't any of us got perfect memories, have we?”
“Run after him!” Annie said to Jack Wilmington, in undertone, “and get him into my carriage. I'll get the little girl. Lyra, don't speak of it.”
“Never!” said Mrs. Wilmington, with delight. “I'm solid for Mr. Peck every time.” ”

“ The well-to-do ladies make an effect of outdoor fashion, in which the poorest shop hand has her part; and in their turn they share her indoor simplicity. These old friends of Annie's wore bonnets and frocks of the latest style and costly material.
They let her make the advances, receiving them with blank passivity, or repelling them with irony, according to the several needs of their self-respect, and talking to one another across her. One of them asked her when her hair had begun to turn, and they each told her how thin she was, but promised her that Hatboro' air would bring her up. ”

“ Gerrish and his store.
Annie sometimes feels that nothing else can explain the maintenance of Lyra Wilmington's peculiar domestic relations at the point which perpetually invites comment and never justifies scandal. The situation seems to her as lamentable as ever. She grieves over Lyra, and likes her, and laughs with her; she no longer detests Jack Wilmington so much since he showed himself so willing and helpful about the Social Union; she thinks there must be a great deal of good in him, and sometimes she is sorry for him, and longs to speak again to Lyra about the wrong she is doing him. ”

“ Putney asked Annie if she had seen Lyra Wilmington lately. Annie told of her call with Mrs. Munger, and Mrs. Putney said: “I like Lyra, and I always did. I presume she isn't very happily married; he's too old; there couldn't have been any love on her part. But she would be a better woman than she is if she had children. Ralph says,” added Mrs. Putney, smiling, “that he knows she would be a good mother, she's such a good aunt.”
Annie put her two hands impressively on the hands of her friend folded at her waist. “Ellen, what does it mean?” ”

“ 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 passive 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. ”

“ They debated this point at some length, and they seemed to forget Annie. She listened with more interest than her concern in the last resting-place of the minister's dead wife really inspired. These old friends of hers seemed to have lost the sensitiveness of their girlhood without having gained tenderness in its place. They treated the affair with a nakedness that shocked her. In the country and in small towns people come face to face with life, especially women. ”

“ Annie pleaded with what she really regarded as a kind of lunacy in the good man. “In the freest society, I've heard my father say, there is naturally an upward and downward tendency; a perfect level is impossible. Some must rise, and some must sink.” ”

“ Wilmington, with indolent amusement, putting out a silencing hand in the direction of the young man, “don't you be so fast. You let your aunty speak for herself. I don't know about not letting the hands stay to the dance and supper, Mrs. Munger. You know I might feel 'put upon.' I used to be one of the hands myself. Yes, Annie, there was a time after you went away, and after father died, when I actually fell so low as to work for an honest living.”
“I think I heard, Lyra,” said Annie ”

“ She doesn't care to please any one, does she?”
“I didn't know that people took part in theatricals for that, Annie. I thought they wanted to please themselves and mortify others. I do. But then I may be different. Perhaps Miss Northwick wants to please Mr. Brandreth.”
“Do you mean it, Lyra?” demanded Annie, arrested on her threshold by the charm of this improbability.
“Well, I don't know; they're opposites. But, upon second thoughts, you needn't come in, Annie. I want you to take a drive with me, and try my new phaeton,” said Lyra, coming out. ”

“ It's all right,” said Mrs. Savor. “I see you'd be'n putting up some kind of job on her the minute she mentioned the cars. Don't you fret any, Miss Kilburn. Rebecca and me'll get along with her, you needn't be afraid.”
Annie could not look at the empty crib where it stood in its alcove when she went to bed; and she cried upon her own pillow with heart-sickness for the child, and with a humiliating doubt of her own part in hurrying to give it up without thought of Mrs. Savor's convenience. What had seemed so noble, so exemplary, began to wear another colour ”

“ No, Annie,” he went on, “I can understand why Brother Peck is not the success with women, and feminine temperaments like me, that his virtues entitle him to be. What we feminine temperaments want is a prophet, and Brother Peck doesn't prophesy worth a cent. He doesn't pretend to be authorised in any sort of way; he has a sneaking style of being no better than you are, and of being rather stumped by some of the truths he finds out. ”

“ Annie felt the blood drop back upon her heart. She caught at the girlish aunt, who was looking about her with a sense of the interest which attached to herself as a party to the spectacle.
“Oh, Rebecca, where is the child?”
“Well, there, Miss Kilburn, I'm ril sorry to tell you, but I guess the sea-air didn't do it a great deal of good, if any. I tell Maria she'll see it in the right light after a while, but of course she can't, first off. Well, there! Somebody's got to look after it. You'll excuse me, Miss Kilburn.” ”

“ Bolton!” shouted Annie, in a voice so deep and hoarse that it shook the heart of a woman who had never known fear of man. “If you say such a thing to me—if you ever say such a thing again—I—I—I will hit you! Send Mr. Bolton for Idella's things—right away!”
“Land!” said Mrs. Savor, when Bolton, after a long conciliatory preamble, explained that he did not believe Miss Kilburn felt a great deal like giving the child up again. ”

“ Savor, and she ran after them, arriving with them where Annie sat.
“I hope you were not anxious about Idella,” Annie said, laughing.
“No; I didn't miss her at once,” said the minister simply; “and then I thought she had merely gone off with some of the other children who were playing about.”
“You shall talk all that over later,” said Mrs. Munger. “Now, Miss Kilburn, I want you and Mr. Peck and Mr. and Mrs. Savor to stay for a cup of coffee that I'm going to give our friends out there. Don't you think they deserve it? Wasn't it a wonderful success? They must be frightfully exhausted. ”

“ Peck.” said the doctor, “I should think Brother Gerrish might safely object to him as a certain kind of sentimentalist.”
“Well, yes, he might, looking at him from the outside. But when you come to talk with Brother Peck, you find yourself sort of frozen out with a most unexpected, hard-headed cold-bloodedness. Brother Peck is plain common-sense itself. He seems to be a man without an illusion, without an emotion.”
“Oh, not so bad as that!” laughed the doctor.
“Ask Miss Kilburn. She's talked with him, and she hates him.”
“No, I don't, Ralph,” Annie began. ”

“ Putney and the doctor began to talk of the nature and origin of evil, and Annie and the boy listened. Putney took high ground, and attributed it to Adam. “You know, Annie,” he explained, “I don't believe this; but I like to get a scientific man that won't quite deny Scripture or the good old Bible premises, and see him suffer. Hello! you up yet, Winthrop? ”

“ Before it ended, Idella had fallen asleep, and Annie sat still with her after the crowd around her began to break up. Mrs. Savor kept her seat beside Annie. She said, “Don't you want I should spell you a little while, Miss Kilburn?” She leaned over the face of the sleeping child. “Why, she ain't much more than a baby! William, you go and see if you can't find Mr. Peck. I'm goin' to stay here with Miss Kilburn.” Her husband humoured her whim, and made his way through the knots and clumps of people toward the rope enclosing the tennis-court. “Won't you let me hold her, Miss Kilburn?” ”

“ Munger's duplicity, and Ralph's escapade—all because I wanted to do good!”
A note of exaggeration had begun to prevail in her self-upbraiding, which was real enough, and the time came for him to suggest, “I think you're a little morbid, Miss Kilburn.”
“Morbid! Of course I am! But that doesn't alter the fact that everything is wrong, does it?”
“Everything!”
“Why, you don't pretend yourself, do you, that everything is right?”
“A true American ought to do so, oughtn't he?” teased the doctor. “One mustn't be a bad citizen.” ”

“ The Wilmington Stocking-Mills spun their own threads, and the first room was like what Annie had seen before in cotton factories, with a faint smell of oil from the machinery, and a fine snow of fluff in the air, and catching to the white-washed walls and the foul window sashes. The tireless machines marched back and forth across the floor, and the men who watched them with suicidal intensity ran after them barefooted when they made off with a broken thread, spliced it, and then escaped from them to their stations again. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Till he began to break, after they went abroad, he had his own way in everything; but as men grow old or infirm they fall into subjection to their womenkind; their rude wills yield in the suppler insistence of the feminine purpose; they take the colour of the feminine moods and emotions; the cycle of life completes itself where it began, in helpless dependence upon the sex; and Rufus Kilburn did not escape the common lot. He was often complaining and unlovely, as aged and ailing men must be ”

“ Yet her belief did not admit the existence of Creative Evil; and so she said to herself that she herself was that evil, and she must struggle against herself; she must question whatever she strongly wished because she strongly wished it. ”

“ Annie found herself sadder when he was gone, and she threw herself upon the old feather-cushioned lounge to enjoy a reverie in keeping with the dreary storm outside. Was it for this that she had left Rome? She had felt, as every American of conscience feels abroad, the drawings of a duty, obscure and indefinable, toward her country, the duty to come home and do something for it, be something in it. This is the impulse of no common patriotism; it is perhaps a sense of the opportunity which America supremely affords for the race to help itself, and for each member of it to help all the rest. ”

“ You have risen yourself, Mr. Peck.”
“I have risen, as you call it,” he said, with a meek sufferance of the application of the point to himself. “Those who rise above the necessity of work for daily bread are in great danger of losing their right relation to other men, as I said when we talked of this before.”
A point had remained in Annie's mind from her first talk with Dr. Morrell. “Yes; and you said once that there could be no sympathy between the rich and the poor—no real love—because they had not had the same experience of life. But how is it about the poor who become rich? ”

“ Sometimes I think the fault is all in myself, and that if I were not so sophisticated and—and—selfish, I should find the old way of doing good just as effective and natural as ever. Then again, I think the conditions are all wrong, and that we ought to be fairer to people, and then we needn't be so good to them. I should prefer that. I hate being good to people I don't like, and I can't like people who don't interest me. ”

“ Munger,” said Putney. “You can't do anything for a client who won't be honest with his attorney. That's what I have to continually impress upon the reprobates who come to me. I say, 'It don't matter what you've done; if you expect me to get you off, you've got to make a clean breast of it.' They generally do; they see the sense of it.”
They all laughed, and Mr. Gerrish said, “Mr. Putney is one of Hatboro's privileged characters, Miss Kilburn.” ”

“ As for my business capacity, I would gladly let that speak for itself, if that capacity had not been turned in the sanctuary itself against the personal reputation which every man holds dearer than life itself, and which has had a deadly blow aimed at it through that—that very capacity. ”