Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “All right, ma’am; a large leg of this year’s lamb — grown to order. Any peas, spinnage, cucumbers, sparrowgrass?”

  “Southern, I suppose?” said Mrs. Munger.

  “Well, not if you want to call ’em native,” said Gates.

  “Yes, I’ll take two bunches of asparagus, and some peas.”

  “Any strawberries? — natives?” suggested Gates.

  “Nonsense!”

  “Same thing; natives of Norfolk.”

  “You had better be honest with me, Mr. Gates,” said Mrs. Munger. “Yes, I’ll take a couple of boxes.”

  “All right! Want ’em nice, and the biggest ones at the bottom of the box?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That’s what I thought. Some customers wants the big ones on top; but I tell ’em it’s all foolishness; just vanity.” Gates laughed a dry, hacking little laugh at his drollery, and kept his eyes on Annie. She smiled at last, with permissive recognition, and Gates came forward. “Used to know your father pretty well; but I can’t keep up with the young folks any more.” He was really not many years older than Annie; he rubbed his right hand on the inside of his long shirt, and gave it her to shake. “Well, you haven’t been about much for the last nine or ten years, that’s a fact.”

  “Eleven,” said Annie, trying to be gay with the hand-shaking, and wondering if this were meeting the lower classes on common ground, and what Mr. Peck would think of it.

  “That so?” queried Gates. “Well, I declare! No wonder you’ve grown!” He hacked out another laugh, and stood on the curb-stone looking at Annie a moment. Then he asked, “Anything else, Mrs. Munger?”

  “No; that’s all. Tell me, Mr. Gates, how do Mr. Peck and Mr. Gerrish get on?” asked Mrs. Munger in a lower tone.

  “Well,” said Gates, “he’s workin’ round — the deacon’s workin’ round gradually, I guess. I guess if Mr. Peck was to put in a little more brimstone, the deacon’d be all right. He’s a great hand for brimstone, you know, the deacon is.”

  Mrs. Munger laughed again, and then she said, with a proselyting sigh, “It’s a pity you couldn’t all find your way into the Church.”

  “Well, may be it would be a good thing,” said Gates, as Mrs. Munger gathered up her reins and chirped to her pony.

  “He isn’t a member of Mr. Peck’s church,” she explained to Annie; “but he’s one of the society, and his wife’s very devout Orthodox. He’s a great character, we think, and he’ll treat you very well, if you keep on the right side of him. They say he cheats awfully in the weight, though.”

  VIII.

  Mrs. Munger drove across the street, and drew up before a large, handsomely ugly brick dry-goods store, whose showy windows had caught Annie’s eye the day she arrived in Hatboro’.

  “I see Mrs. Gerrish has got here first,” Mrs. Munger said, indicating the perambulator at the door, and she dismounted and fastened her pony with a weight, which she took from the front of the phaeton. On either door jamb of the store was a curved plate of polished metal, with the name GERRISH cut into it in black letters; the sills of the wide windows were of metal, and bore the same legend. At the threshold a very prim, ceremonious little man, spare and straight, met Mrs. Munger with a ceremonious bow, and a solemn “How do you do, ma’am? how do you do? I hope I see you well,” and he put a small dry hand into the ample clasp of Mrs. Munger’s gauntlet.

  “Very well indeed, Mr. Gerrish. Isn’t it a lovely morning? You know Miss Kilburn, Mr. Gerrish.”

  He took Annie’s hand into his right and covered it with his left, lifting his eyes to look her in the face with an old-merchant-like cordiality.

  “Why, yes, indeed! Delighted to see her. Her father was one of my best friends. I may say that I owe everything that I am to Squire Kilburn; he advised me to stick to commerce when I once thought of studying law. Glad to welcome you back to Hatboro’, Miss Kilburn. You see changes on the surface, no doubt, but you’ll find the genuine old feeling here. Walk right back, ladies,” he continued, releasing Annie’s hand to waft them before him toward the rear of the store. “You’ll find Mrs. Gerrish in my room there — my Growlery, as I call it.” He seemed to think he had invented the name. “And Mrs. Gerrish tells me that you’ve really come back,” he said, leaning decorously toward Annie as they walked, “with the intention of taking up your residence permanently among us. You will find very few places like Hatboro’.”

  As he spoke, walking with his hands clasped behind him, he glanced to right and left at the shop-girls on foot behind the counter, who dropped their eyes under their different bangs as they caught his glance, and bridled nervously. He denied them the use of chewing-gum; he permitted no conversation, as he called it, among them; and he addressed no jokes or idle speeches to them himself. A system of grooves overhead brought to his counting-room the cash from the clerks in wooden balls, and he returned the change, and kept the accounts, with a pitiless eye for errors. The women were afraid of him, and hated him with bitterness, which exploded at crises in excesses of hysterical impudence.

  His store was an example of variety, punctuality, and quality. Upon the theory, for which he deserved the credit, of giving to a country place the advantages of one of the great city establishments, he was gradually gathering, in their fashion, the small commerce into his hands. He had already opened his bazaar through into the adjoining store, which he had bought out, and he kept every sort of thing desired or needed in a country town, with a tempting stock of articles before unknown to the shopkeepers of Hatboro’. Everything was of the very quality represented; the prices were low, but inflexible, and cash payments, except in the case of some rich customers of unimpeachable credit, were invariably exacted; at the same time every reasonable facility for the exchange or return of goods was afforded. Nothing could exceed the justice and fidelity of his dealing with the public. He had even some effects of generosity in his dealing with his dependants; he furnished them free seats in the churches of their different persuasions, and he closed every night at six o’clock, except Saturday, when the shop hands were paid off, and made their purchases for the coming week.

  He stepped lightly before Annie and Mrs. Munger, and pushed open the ground-glass door of his office for them. It was like a bank parlour, except for Mrs. Gerrish sitting in her husband’s leather-cushioned swivel chair, with her last-born in her lap; she greeted the others noisily, without trying to rise.

  “You see we are quite at home here,” said Mr. Gerrish.

  “Yes, and very snug you are, too,” said Mrs. Munger, taking one half of the leather lounge, and leaving the other half to Annie. “I don’t wonder Mrs. Gerrish likes to visit you here.”

  Mr. Gerrish laughed, and said to his wife, who moved provisionally in her chair, seeing he had none, “Sit still, my dear; I prefer my usual perch.” He took a high stool beside a desk, and gathered a ruler in his hand.

  “Well, I may as well begin at the beginning,” said Mrs. Munger, “and I’ll try to be short, for I know that these are business hours.”

  “Take all the time you want, Mrs. Munger,” said Mr. Gerrish affably. “It’s my idea that a good business man’s business can go on without him, when necessary.”

  “Of course!” Mrs. Munger sighed. “If everybody had your system, Mr. Gerrish!” She went on and succinctly expounded the scheme of the Social Union. “I suppose I can’t deny that the idea occurred to me,” she concluded, “but we can’t hope to develop it without the co-operation of the ladies of Old Hatboro’, and I’ve come, first of all, to Mrs. Gerrish.”

  Mr. Gerrish bowed his acknowledgments of the honour done his wife, with a gravity which she misinterpreted.

  “I think,” she began, with her censorious manner and accent, “that these people have too much done for them now. They’re perfectly spoiled. Don’t you, Annie?”

  Mr. Gerrish did not give Annie time to answer. “I differ with you, my dear,” he cut in. “It is my opinion — Or I don’t know but you wish to confine this matter e
ntirely to the ladies?” he suggested to Mrs. Munger.

  “Oh, I’m only too proud and glad that you feel interested in the matter!” cried Mrs. Munger. “Without the gentlemen’s practical views, we ladies are such feeble folk — mere conies in the rocks.”

  “I am as much opposed as Mrs. Gerrish — or any one — to acceding to unjust demands on the part of my clerks or other employees,” Mr. Gerrish began.

  “Yes, that’s what I mean,” said his wife, and broke down with a giggle.

  He went on, without regarding her: “I have always made it a rule, as far as business went, to keep my own affairs entirely in my own hands. I fix the hours, and I fix the wages, and I fix all the other conditions, and I say plainly, ‘If you don’t like them, ‘don’t come,’ or ‘don’t stay,’ and I never have any difficulty.”

  “I’m sure,” said Mrs. Munger, “that if all the employers in the country would take such a stand, there would soon be an end of labour troubles. I think we’re too concessive.”

  “And I do too, Mrs. Munger!” cried Mrs. Gerrish, glad of the occasion to be censorious and of the finer lady’s opinion at the same time. “That’s what I meant. Don’t you, Annie?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand exactly,” Annie replied.

  Mr. Gerrish kept his eye on Mrs. Munger’s face, now arranged for indefinite photography, as he went on. “That is exactly what I say to them. That is what I said to Mr. Marvin one year ago, when he had that trouble in his shoe shop. I said, ‘You’re too concessive.’ I said, ‘Mr. Marvin, if you give those fellows an inch, they’ll take an ell. Mr. Marvin,’ said I, ‘you’ve got to begin by being your own master, if you want to be master of anybody else. You’ve got to put your foot down, as Mr. Lincoln said; and as I say, you’ve got to keep it down.’”

  Mrs. Gerrish looked at the other ladies for admiration, and Mrs. Munger said, rapidly, without disarranging her face —

  “Oh yes. And how much misery could be saved in such cases by a little firmness at the outset!”

  “Mr. Marvin differed with me,” said Mr. Gerrish sorrowfully. “He agreed with me on the main point, but he said that too many of his hands had been in his regiment, and he couldn’t lock them out. He submitted to arbitration. And what is arbitration?” asked Mr. Gerrish, levelling his ruler at Mrs. Munger. “It is postponing the evil day.”

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Munger, without winking.

  “Mr. Marvin,” Mr. Gerrish proceeded, “may be running very smoothly now, and sailing before the wind all — all — nicely; but I tell you his house is built upon the sand,” He put his ruler by on the desk very softly, and resumed with impressive quiet: “I never had any trouble but once. I had a porter in this store who wanted his pay raised. I simply said that I made it a rule to propose all advances of salary myself, and I should submit to no dictation from any one. He told me to go to — a place that I will not repeat, and I told him to walk out of my store. He was under the influence of liquor at the time, I suppose. I understand that he is drinking very hard. He does nothing to support his family whatever, and from all that I can gather, he bids fair to fill a drunkard’s grave inside of six months.”

  Mrs. Munger seized her opportunity. “Yes; and it is just such cases as this that the Social Union is designed to meet. If this man had some such place to spend his evenings — and bring his family if he chose — where he could get a cup of good coffee for the same price as a glass of rum — Don’t you see?”

  She looked round at the different faces, and Mr. Gerrish slightly frowned, as if the vision of the Social Union interposing between his late porter and a drunkard’s grave, with a cup of good coffee, were not to his taste altogether; but he said: “Precisely so! And I was about to make the remark that while I am very strict — and obliged to be — with those under me in business, no one is more disposed to promote such objects as this of yours.”

  “I was sure you would approve of it,” said Mrs. Munger. “That is why I came to you — to you and Mrs. Gerrish — first,” said Mrs. Munger. “I was sure you would see it in the right light.” She looked round at Annie for corroboration, and Annie was in the social necessity of making a confirmatory murmur.

  Mr. Gerrish ignored them both in the more interesting work of celebrating himself. “I may say that there is not an institution in this town which I have not contributed my humble efforts to — to — establish, from the drinking fountain in front of this store, to the soldiers’ monument on the village green.”

  Annie turned red; Mrs. Munger said shamelessly, “That beautiful monument!” and looked at Annie with eyes full of gratitude to Mr. Gerrish.

  “The schools, the sidewalks, the water-works, the free library, the introduction of electricity, the projected system of drainage, and all the various religious enterprises at various times, I am proud — I am humbly proud — that I have been allowed to be the means of doing — sustaining—”

  He lost himself in the labyrinths of his sentence, and Mrs. Munger came to his rescue: “I fancy Hatboro’ wouldn’t be Hatboro’ without you, Mr. Gerrish! And you don’t think that Mr. Peck’s objection will be seriously felt by other leading citizens?”

  “What is Mr. Peck’s objection?” demanded Mr. Gerrish, perceptibly bristling up at the name of his pastor.

  “Why, he talked it over with Miss Kilburn last night, and he objected to an entertainment which wouldn’t be open to all — to the shop hands and everybody.” Mrs. Munger explained the point fully. She repeated some things that Annie had said in ridicule of Mr. Peck’s position regarding it. “If you do think that part would be bad or impolitic,” Mrs. Munger concluded, “we could drop the invited supper and the dance, and simply have the theatricals.”

  She bent upon Mr. Gerrish a face of candid deference that filled him with self-importance almost to bursting.

  “No!” he said, shaking his head, and “No!” closing his lips abruptly, and opening them again to emit a final “No!” with an explosive force which alone seemed to save him. “Not at all, Mrs. Munger; not on any account! I am surprised at Mr. Peck, or rather I am not surprised. He is not a practical man — not a man of the world; and I should have much preferred to hear that he objected to the dancing and the play; I could have understood that; I could have gone with him in that to a certain extent, though I can see no harm in such things when properly conducted. I have a great respect for Mr. Peck; I was largely instrumental in getting him here; but he is altogether wrong in this matter. We are not obliged to go out into the highways and the hedges until the bidden guests have — er — declined.”

  “Exactly,” said Mrs. Munger. “I never thought of that.”

  Mrs. Gerrish shifted her baby to another knee, and followed her husband with her eyes, as he dismounted from his stool and began to pace the room.

  “I came into this town a poor boy, without a penny in my pocket, and I have made my own way, every inch of it, unaided and alone. I am a thorough believer in giving every one an equal chance to rise and to — get along; I would not throw an obstacle in anybody’s way; but I do not believe — I do not believe — in pampering those who have not risen, or have made no effort to rise.”

  “It’s their wastefulness, in nine cases out of ten, that keeps them down,” said Mrs. Gerrish.

  “I don’t care what it is, I don’t ask what it is, that keeps them down. I don’t expect to invite my clerks or Mrs. Gerrish’s servants into my parlour. I will meet them at the polls, or the communion table, or on any proper occasion; but a man’s home is sacred. I will not allow my wife or my children to associate with those whose — whose — whose idleness, or vice, or whatever, has kept them down in a country where — where everybody stands on an equality; and what I will not do myself, I will not ask others to do. I make it a rule to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. It is all nonsense to attempt to introduce those one-ideaed notions into — put them in practice.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Munger, with deep conviction, “that is my own feel
ing, Mr. Gerrish, and I’m glad to have it corroborated by your experience. Then you wouldn’t drop the little invited dance and supper?”

  “I will tell you how I feel about it, Mrs. Munger,” said Mr. Gerrish, pausing in his walk, and putting on a fine, patronising, gentleman-of-the-old-school smile. “You may put me down for any number of tickets — five, ten, fifteen — and you may command me in anything I can do to further the objects of your enterprise, if you will keep the invited supper and dance. But I should not be prepared to do anything if they are dropped.”

  “What a comfort it is to meet a person who knows his own mind!” exclaimed Mrs. Munger.

  “Got company, Billy?” asked a voice at the door; and it added, “Glad to see you here, Mrs. Gerrish.”

  “Ah, Mr. Putney! Come in. Hope I see you well, sir!” cried Mr. Gerrish. “Come in!” he repeated, with jovial frankness. “Nobody but friends here.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Putney, with whimsical perversity, holding the door ajar. “I see that arch-conspirator from South Hatboro’,” he said, looking at Mrs. Munger.

  He showed himself, as he stood holding the door ajar, a lank little figure, dressed with reckless slovenliness in a suit of old-fashioned black; a loose neck-cloth fell stringing down his shirt front, which his unbuttoned waistcoat exposed, with its stains from the tobacco upon which his thin little jaws worked mechanically, as he stared into the room with flamy blue eyes; his silk hat was pushed back from a high, clear forehead; he had yesterday’s stubble on his beardless cheeks; a heavy moustache and imperial gave dash to a cast of countenance that might otherwise have seemed slight and effeminate.

  “Yes; but I’m in charge of Miss Kilburn, and you needn’t be afraid of me. Come in. We wish to consult you,” cried Mrs. Munger. Mrs. Gerrish cackled some applausive incoherencies.

  Putney advanced into the room, and dropped his burlesque air as he approached Annie.

  “Miss Kilburn, I must apologise for not having called with Mrs. Putney to pay my respects. I have been away; when I got back I found she had stolen a march on me. But I’m going to make Ellen bring me at once. I don’t think I’ve been in your house since the old Judge’s time. Well, he was an able man, and a good man; I was awfully fond of the old Judge, in a boy’s way.”