Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “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.

  “Oh, well, then, perhaps he only made you hate yourself,” said Putney. There was something charming in his mockery, like the teasing of a brother with a sister; and Annie did not find the atonement to which he brought her altogether painful. It seemed to her really that she was getting off pretty easily, and she laughed with hearty consent at last.

  Winthrop asked solemnly, “How did he do that?”

  “Oh, I can’t tell exactly, Winthrop,” she said, touched by the boy’s simple interest in this abstruse point. “He made me feel that I had been rather mean and cruel when I thought I had only been practical. I can’t explain; but it wasn’t a comfortable feeling, my dear.”

  “I guess that’s the trouble with Brother Peck,” said Putney. “He doesn’t make you feel comfortable. He doesn’t flatter you up worth a cent. There was Annie expecting him to take the most fervent interest in her theatricals, and her Social Union, and coo round, and tell her what a noble woman she was, and beg her to consider her health, and not overwork herself in doing good; but instead of that he simply showed her that she was a moral Cave-Dweller, and that she was living in a Stone Age of social brutalities; and of course she hated him.”

  “Yes, that was the way, Winthrop,” said Annie; and they all laughed with her.

  “Now you take them into the parlour, Ralph,” said his wife, rising, “and tell them how he made you hate him.”

  “I shouldn’t like anything better,” replied Putney. He lifted the large ugly kerosene lamp that had been set on the table when it grew dark during tea, and carried it into the parlour with him. His wife remained to speak with her little helper, but she sent Annie with the gentlemen.

  “Why, there isn’t a great deal of it — more spirit than letter, so to speak,” said Putney, when he put down the lamp in the parlour. “You know how I like to go on about other people’s sins, and the world’s wickedness generally; but one day Brother Peck, in that cool, impersonal way of his, suggested that it was not a wholly meritorious thing to hate evil. He went so far as to say that perhaps we could not love them that despitefully used us if we hated their evil so furiously. He said it was a good deal more desirable to understand evil than to hate it, for then we could begin to cure it. Yes, Brother Peck let in a good deal of light on me. He rather insinuated that I must be possessed by the very evils I hated, and that was the reason I was so violent about them. I had always supposed that I hated other people’s cruelty because I was merciful, and their meanness because I was magnanimous, and their intolerance because I was generous, and their conceit because I was modest, and their selfishness because I was disinterested; but after listening to Brother Peck a while I came to the conclusion that I hated these things in others because I was cruel myself, and mean, and bigoted, and conceited, and piggish; and that’s why I’ve hated Brother Peck ever since — just like you, Annie. But he didn’t reform me, I’m thankful to say, any more than he did you. I’ve gone on just the same, and I suppose I hate more infernal scoundrels and loathe more infernal idiots to-day than ever; but I perceive that I’m no part of the power that makes for righteousness as long as I work that racket; and now I sin with light and knowledge, anyway. 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. No, women like a good prophet about as well as they do a good doctor. Now if you, if you could unite the two functions, Doc—”

  “Sort of medicine-man?” suggested Morrell.

  “Exactly! The aborigines understood the thing. Why, I suppose that a real live medicine-man could go through a community like this and not leave a sinful soul nor a sore body in it among the ladies — perfect faith cure.”

  “But what did you say to Mr. Peck, Ralph?” asked Annie. “Didn’t you attempt any defence?”

  “No,” said Putney. “He had the advantage of me. You can’t talk back at a man in the pulpit.”

  “Oh, it was a sermon?”

  “I suppose the other people thought so. But I knew it was a private conversation that he was publicly holding with me.”

  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? I guess I’ll go through the form of carrying you to bed, my son.”

  When Mrs. Putney rejoined them, Annie said she must go, and Mrs. Putney went upstairs with her, apparently to help her put on her things, but really to have that talk before parting which guest and hostess value above the whole evening’s pleasure. She showed Annie the pictures of the little girls that had died, and talked a great deal about their sickness and their loveliness in death. Then they spoke of others, and Mrs. 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?”

  “Nothing more than what you saw, Annie. She must have — or she will have — some one to amuse her; to be at her beck and call; and it’s best to have it all in the family, Ralph says.”

  “But isn’t it — doesn’t he think it’s — odd?”

  “It makes talk.”

  They moved a little toward the door, holding each other’s hands. “Ellen, I’ve had a lovely time!”

  “And so have I, Annie. I thought you’d like to meet Dr. Morrell.”

  “Oh yes, indeed!”

  “And I can’t tell you what a night this has been for Ralph. He likes you so much, and it isn’t often that he has a chance to talk to two such people as you and Dr. Morrell.”

  “How brilliant he is!” Annie sighed.

  “Yes, he’s a very able man. It’s very fortunate for Hatboro’ to have such a doctor. He and Ralph are great cronies. I never feel uneasy now when Ralph’s out late — I know he’s been up at the doctor’s office, talking. I—”

  Annie broke in with a laugh. “I’ve no doubt Dr. Morrell is all you say, Ellen, but I meant Ralph when I spoke of brilliancy. He has a great future, I’m sure.”

  Mrs. Putney was silent for a moment. “I’m satisfied with the present, so long as Ralph—” The tears suddenly gushed out of her eyes, and ran down over the fine wrinkles of her plump little cheeks.

  “Not quite so much loud talking, please,” piped a thin, high voice from a room across the stairs landing.

  “Why, dear little soul!” cried Annie. “I forgot he’d gone to bed.”

  “Would you like to see him?” asked his mother.

  She led the way into the room where the boy lay in a low bed near a larger one. His crutches lay beside it. “Win sleeps in our room yet. He can take care of himself quite well. But when he wakes in the night he likes to reach out and touch his father’s hand.”

  The child looked mortified.

  “I wish I could reach out and touch my father’s hand when I wake in the night,” said Annie.

  The cloud left the boy’s face. “I can’t remember whether I said my prayers, mother, I’ve been thinking so.”


  “Well, say them over again, to me.”

  The men’s voices sounded in the hall below, and the ladies found them there. Dr. Morrell had his hat in his hand.

  “Look here, Annie,” said Putney, “I expected to walk home with you, but Doc Morrell says he’s going to cut me out. It looks like a put-up job. I don’t know whether you’re in it or not, but there’s no doubt about Morrell.”

  Mrs. Putney gave a sort of gasp, and then they all shouted with laughter, and Annie and the doctor went out into the night. In the imperfect light which the electrics of the main street flung afar into the little avenue where Putney lived, and the moon sent through the sidewalk trees, they struck against each other as they walked, and the doctor said, “Hadn’t you better take my arm, Miss Kilburn, till we get used to the dark?”

  “Yes, I think I had, decidedly,” she answered; and she hurried to add: “Dr. Morrell, there is something I want to ask you. You’re their physician, aren’t you?”

  “The Putneys? Yes.”

  “Well, then, you can tell me—”

  “Oh no, I can’t, if you ask me as their physician,” he interrupted.

  “Well, then, as their friend. Mrs. Putney said something to me that makes me very unhappy. I thought Mr. Putney was out of all danger of his — trouble. Hasn’t he perfectly reformed? Does he ever—”

  She stopped, and Dr. Morrell did not answer at once. Then he said seriously: “It’s a continual fight with a man of Putney’s temperament, and sometimes he gets beaten. Yes, I guess you’d better know it.”

  “Poor Ellen!”

  “They don’t allow themselves to be discouraged. As soon as he’s on his feet they begin the fight again. But of course it prevents his success in his profession, and he’ll always be a second-rate country lawyer.”

  “Poor Ralph! And so brilliant as he is! He could be anything.”

  “We must be glad if he can be something, as it is.”

  “Yes, and how happy they seem together, all three of them! That child worships his father; and how tender Ralph is of him! How good he is to his wife; and how proud she is of him! And that awful shadow over them all the time! I don’t see how they live!”

  The doctor was silent for a moment, and finally said: “They have the peace that seems to come to people from the presence of a common peril, and they have the comfort of people who never blink the facts.”

  “I think Ralph is terrible. I wish he’d let other people blink the facts a little.”

  “Of course,” said the doctor, “it’s become a habit with him now, or a mania. He seems to speak of his trouble as if mentioning it were a sort of conjuration to prevent it. I wouldn’t venture to check him in his way of talking. He may find strength in it.”

  “It’s all terrible!”

  “But it isn’t by any means hopeless.”

  “I’m so glad to hear you say so. You see a great deal of them, I believe?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, getting back from their seriousness, with apparent relief. “Pretty nearly every day. Putney and I consider the ways of God to man a good deal together. You can imagine that in a place like Hatboro’ one would make the most of such a friend. In fact, anywhere.”

  “Yes, of course,” Annie assented. “Dr. Morrell,” she added, in that effect of continuing the subject with which one breaks away from it, “do you know much about South Hatboro’?”

  “I have some patients there.”

  “I was there this morning—”

  “I heard of you. They all take a great interest in your theatricals.”

  “In my theatricals? Really this is too much! Who has made them my theatricals, I should like to know? Everybody at South Hatboro’ talked as if I had got them up.”

  “And haven’t you?”

  “No. I’ve had nothing to do with them. Mr. Brandreth spoke to me about them a week ago, and I was foolish enough to go round with Mrs. Munger to collect public opinion about her invited dance and supper; and now it appears that I have invented the whole affair.”

  “I certainly got that impression,” said the doctor, with a laugh lurking under his gravity.

  “Well, it’s simply atrocious,” said Annie. “I’ve nothing at all to do with either. I don’t even know that I approve of their object.”

  “Their object?”

  “Yes. The Social Union.”

  “Oh! Oh yes. I had forgot about the object,” and now the doctor laughed outright.

  “It seems to have dropped into the background with everybody,” said Annie, laughing too.

  “You like the unconventionality of South Hatboro’?” suggested the doctor, after a little silence.

  “Oh, very much,” said Annie. “I was used to the same thing abroad. It might be an American colony anywhere on the Continent.”

  “I suppose,” said the doctor musingly, “that the same conditions of sojourn and disoccupation would produce the same social effects anywhere. Then you must feel quite at home in South Hatboro’!”

  “Quite! It’s what I came back to avoid. I was sick of the life over there, and I wanted to be of some use here, instead of wasting all my days.”

  She stopped, resolved not to go on if he took this lightly, but the doctor answered her with sufficient gravity: “Well?”

  “It seemed to me that if I could be of any use in the world anywhere, I could in the place where I was born, and where my whole childhood was spent. I’ve been at home a month now, the most useless person in Hatboro’. I did catch at the first thing that offered — at Mr. Brandreth and his ridiculous Social Union and theatricals, and brought all this trouble on myself. I talked to Mr. Peck about them. You know what his views are?”

  “Only from Putney’s talk,” said the doctor.

  “He didn’t merely disapprove of the dance and supper, but he had some very peculiar notions about the relations of the different classes in general,” said Annie; and this was the point she had meant circuitously to lead up to when she began to speak of South Hatboro’, though she theoretically despised all sorts of feminine indirectness.

  “Yes?” said the doctor. “What notions?”

  “Well, he thinks that if you have money, you can’t do good with it.”

  “That’s rather odd,” said Dr. Morrell.

  “I don’t state it quite fairly. He meant that you can’t make any kindness with it between yourself and the — the poor.”

  “That’s odd too.”

  “Yes,” said Annie anxiously. “You can impose an obligation, he says, but you can’t create sympathy. Of course Ralph exaggerates what I said about him in connection with the invited dance and supper, though I don’t justify what I did say; and if I’d known then, as I do now, what his history had been, I should have been more careful in my talk with him. I should be very sorry to have hurt his feelings, and I suppose people who’ve come up in that way are sensitive?”

  She suggested this, and it was not the reassurance she was seeking to have Dr. Morrell say, “Naturally.”

  She continued with an effort: “I’m afraid I didn’t respect his sincerity, and I ought to have done that, though I don’t at all agree with him on the other points. It seems to me that what he said was shocking, and perfectly — impossible.”

  “Why, what was it?” asked the doctor.

  “He said there could be no real kindness between the rich and poor, because all their experiences of life were different. It amounted to saying that there ought not to be any wealth. Don’t you think so?”

  “Really, I’ve never thought about it,” returned Dr. Morrell. After a moment he asked, “Isn’t it rather an abstraction?”

  “Don’t say that!” said Annie nervously. “It’s the most concrete thing in the world!”

  The doctor laughed with enjoyment of her convulsive emphasis; but she went on: “I don’t think life’s worth living if you’re to be shut up all your days to the intelligence merely of your own class.”

  “Who said you were?”

  “Mr. P
eck.”

  “And what was your inference from the fact? That there oughtn’t to be any classes?”

  “Of course it won’t do to say that. There must be social differences. Don’t you think so?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dr. Morrell. “I never thought of it in that light before. It’s a very curious question.” He asked, brightening gaily after a moment of sober pause, “Is that the whole trouble?”

  “Isn’t it enough?”

  “No; I don’t think it is. Why didn’t you tell him that you didn’t want any gratitude?”.

  “Not want any?” she demanded.

  “Oh!” said Dr. Morrell, “I didn’t know but you thought it was enough to give.”

  Annie believed that he was making fun of her, and she tried to make her resentful silence dignified; but she only answered sadly: “No; it isn’t enough for me. Besides, he made me see that you can’t give sympathy where you can’t receive it.”

  “Well, that is bad,” said the doctor, and he laughed again. “Excuse me,” he added. “I see the point. But why don’t you forget it?”

  “Forget it!”

  “Yes. If you can’t help it, why need you worry about it?”

  She gave a kind of gasp of astonishment. “Do you really think that would be right?” She edged a little away from Dr. Morrell, as if with distrust.

  “Well, no; I can’t say that I do,” he returned thoughtfully, without seeming to have noticed her withdrawal. “I don’t suppose I was looking at the moral side. It’s rather out of my way to do that. If a physician let himself get into the habit of doing that, he might regard nine-tenths of the diseases he has to treat as just penalties, and decline to interfere.”

  She fancied that he was amused again, rather than deeply concerned, and she determined to make him own his personal complicity in the matter if she could. “Then you do feel sympathy with your patients? You find it necessary to do so?”

  The doctor thought a moment. “I take an interest in their diseases.”